Forbidden Colors
by Experimental
Summary: They turned their backs on god for a taste of a forbidden world... A series of histories, a collection of souls: Okazaki; Muraki; Tsuzuki; Kurosaki; Tatsumi and Mibu.
1. Okazaki File, Part A

**Foreword** (feel free to skip unless you're _really_ interested): The song "Forbidden Colours," from which the lines at the chapter beginnings are taken, is by Ryuichi Sakamoto of Yellow Magic Orchestra fame, featuring David Sylvian of Japan fame, written for but never appearing in the film _Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence_ (of _no_ fame, apparently), based on the novela _The Seed and the Sower_ by Laurens van der Post, and starring Sakamoto, David Bowie, "Beat" Takeshi Kitano and Tom Conti—in which Sakamoto is the disillusioned young officer in charge of a WWII POW camp in Java who falls for Bowie's captured fighter pilot, who in turn is tortured by guilt over betraying his little brother. -deep breath- And that has nothing to do with this. Slightly more to the point, "Forbidden Colors" comes from the novel of the same name by Mishima Yukio about a very confused and narcissistic young man torn between his family duties and the gay underworld of postwar Japan—neither of which makes him happy. As for where the song's Christian overtones come from: I can only guess, but that was a large part of why I found _Yami_ so appropriate. (The music video can be found on YouTube.)

**Disclaimer:** With this story I've tried to show motives for the characters by embellishing their pasts, focusing on male loves of one kind or another. Therefore I must add that most of this is based on speculation and if Matsushita-sensei ever does go back and clear things up . . . Well, my extrapolations should be taken with a grain of salt. The first chapter is a backstory for the Saint Michel arc in the fourth book of the manga (Izuru, Fujisawa, Mitani, Tsukiori, Robert and Maeda are _Matsushita's_ characters). Later parts will deal with regulars.

**A word on the Okazaki chapter:** The Saint Michel arc was _heavily_ influenced by Umberto Eco's novel _The Name of the Rose_ and the film made out of it, and there are many parallels between the characters and situations which I've tried to highlight. The student council members at the beginning are based on characters from Mishima's novel.  
I've kept "Sensei" as a form of address in Izuru and Fujisawa's dialog because it has more intimate and reverent connotations than the "Professor" in the English translation.

**These stories are for a mature audience,** so reader discretion is advised. They contain sexuality, primarily but not always of a homosexual nature, some of it non-consensual; masturbation and incest; misogyny; religious, occult and sacrilegious matters, including demonic possession; obscure references; anatomy; violence and graphic gore; self-mutilation; suicide, homicide, patricide and infanticide; general bad behavior and shitloads of guilt. (Not all at once, of course.) Consider yourself warned, but this _is,_ after all, _Yami no Matsuei_. . . .

* * *

_The ephemerality of worldly things is like springtime blossoms scattering_  
_in the breeze; the brevity of human existence is like an autumn moon disappearing_  
_behind a cloud._

—Tale of the Heike, the Initiates' Chapter

—

1

_The wounds on your hands never seem to heal_  
_I thought all I needed was to believe_

—

It was Mitani's first year teaching at the Saint Michel Preparatory High School for Boys.

He called it a dream job. Having received his degree in Christian history and art, the school had long held special appeal for him. It was built to be a replica of the Mont-Saint-Michel abbey off the Normandy coast, almost completely surrounded by water except for one long two-lane floating bridge leading in and out, and rather secluded from the rest of the Nagasaki area. In addition, the school's chapel also featured reproductions of famous stained glass windows, those scriptures of the once illiterate masses, most notably the "Notification of Conception" from Saint-Etienne Cathedral in Bourges and Augsburg's eleventh-century "The Prophet." It was, in short, a melting pot of Christian achievement, just as the original location must have seemed an amalgamation of different faiths, piled one atop the other, the weight of them welding them together like sedimentary rock.

The rock on which the original abbey was built had once been called Mont Tombe when it was used by Druids as a graveyard. In Roman times, it became a place of worship for the secretive cult of Mithras, the Unconquered Sun, whose followers showed their devotion by branding themselves, before the spread of Christianity. It was not until the year 708 that St Aubert began construction of the abbey, after the Archangel Michael appeared to him in a series of dreams. He had doubted the authenticity of the dream the first night, and still the second, until on the third St Michael tapped him on the head with his finger. (Some of the students chuckled politely as Mitani reached this part of the story.) Still it took centuries of construction and reconstruction before the abbey reached its present state, the state which served the basis for this school half a world away.

Similarly, Nagasaki had seen its phases—Shinto, Buddhism, Christianity—and had its share of highs and lows. Destruction by the A-bomb and rebirth. Defeat and hope. It was a unique cycle, and though they were only living in one moment of it, Mitani wished to impress upon them the pride they should have in the history of the area, because as students of Saint Michel academy it was their history as well, with all its extremes. As Japanese, as residents of Nagasaki, and as Christians they should appreciate the reoccurring themes of transformation and renewal that had shaped their lives.

Thus went Mitani's introductory speech to his second year class, 2-A. He was by far the youngest teacher in the academy, in his twenties and recently out of university. He wore his hair in a short ponytail and a fringe hung down over his eyes. Standing at the front of the room in his pressed suit and plain tie he seemed small, like a boy trying his best to dress like adults around him. The writer Endo Shusaku had once described his faith like a suit of Western clothing, awkward and restrictive; and as Mitani related the same story in standard Japanese, one could not help but think his position was like an ill-fitting suit, in need of compromise with his youth.

But it was precisely his youth that attracted the students to him. He had a timid personality, easily overwhelmed, but once he was on a roll as he was now, his voice filled with a passion to which only the young themselves could truly relate.

He said little about himself. Boys used to sleeping through their older professors' self-glorifying first days sat up and listened as he told instead gruesome and inspiring stories of the trials of Kyushu's Christian martyrs in the seventeenth century, and the guilt—just as painful—of those who had chosen to give up their faith rather than see those precious to them suffer. He related their experiences to those early Christians who were tortured in the circuses and private gardens of the corrupt Roman emperors. Even St Peter, the father of their church, was no exception. He had already denied Christ three times and yet insisted of the emperor Nero that he be crucified upside down at Vaticanus, knowing he did not deserve to emulate Christ in full. And could his faith and atonement be shown more fittingly than in his death? Even the father of the church had stumbled along the way—even Christ himself had had his doubts, his weaknesses. But it was his sacrifice—everyone's sacrifice—that made it possible for others to rebuild themselves and find meaning in their existence.

Mitani was speaking of history, and the senior instructors who sat in metal folding chairs along the side of the room making careful note of his speech heard a sermon intended to inspire morality in the students. What Okazaki Izuru heard, however, was something entirely different, and not at all as trite. He could hear it in the telling of St Peter's martyrdom, and the guilt of Kichijiro. Though the intent may have been purely intellectual, Mitani's words came from his heart, from his own personal faith and own personal failings that would otherwise have been irrelevant in the classroom.

At first, Izuru disliked him for it. He found it conceited of the new teacher that he would choose to speak of his own history in such a roundabout and presumptuous way, comparing himself to martyrs, rather than state his qualifications outright like everyone else. His humility bordered on hubris. But Izuru quickly realized it was in fact envy he felt.

Envy.

He could have laughed. He couldn't see what of the new teacher was deserving of his envy. The man's personality seemed shallow and unstable, and he was only saying these things before his senior colleagues because he knew what they wanted to hear. Izuru's classmates were so enthralled by his stories they forgot that they had all heard them before. It was true Mitani's methodology was worthy of attention, but, as the class captain, so were Izuru's after all.

It came to him slowly what set Mitani apart from the others: He was genuine.

He drew his speech to a close with a short, somewhat informal bow belying his age, and expressed the typical hopes that he and his students would get along and all enjoy the rest of the school year together.

Then, as the head of his class and therefore representative of its feelings, Izuru stood to say a word of welcome to their new teacher.

"A wise man once said," he began, "'those who can, do; those who can't, teach.'"

Stifled laughter echoed around the room, but the senior instructors' faces clearly showed their disapproval. Paying them no heed, Izuru smiled. Mitani's cheeks colored, but he seemed to understand something in Izuru's manner and smiled as well. "Please regard us favorably, Sensei. We look forward to spending the year with you," Izuru said, and bowed. Solemnly and as one, the class echoed his wish. Hands rose quickly with questions.

Outside, the blue sky and bright reds and golds of the trees, that last nostalgic burst of color before winter, signaled the start of the latter term.

—

"Ahh . . . yeah. . . . Right there. . . ."

Fujisawa moaned quietly as Izuru moved deeper inside him. The springs in the mattress groaned beneath them, underscoring their pleasure as they found a rhythm. Fujisawa's breathing was hard and carnal in Izuru's ear as he rocked back and forth above him, exciting him as though in that wordless hush were all the filthy suggestions Izuru saw trapped behind Fujisawa's eyes.

"Oh, God—" Izuru gasped, meaning nothing religious by it, unless the sensations driving their bodies could be described as a religious experience. It would at least make an interesting confession for the strict priest they joked got his jollies listening to stories like theirs. _Then I took the Lord's name in vain four—no, five times while I was doing my classmate. . . . What's that, Father? You don't think you know quite what I mean by 'doing'?_

Fujisawa sat up erect on his classmate's hips, gasping at the better angle the new position provided. He touched himself and nipped his own fingertips and breathed unintelligible words of encouragement while Izuru thrust up into him, as though he were making love to himself. The picture he presented made Izuru come with a cry; Fujisawa's satisfied groan echoed in his ears soon after.

Afterwards they sat naked on Izuru's bed—his roommate was on paid leave for the evening—sharing a smoke from half a pack Fujisawa had received from a third-year as trade for a blow job. As they passed the cigarette between them, Fujisawa said in jest, "Here's to the new term."

"Hear, hear," said Izuru. He took a puff and blew the smoke in Fujisawa's direction.

He was a handsome and charismatic young man, Okazaki Izuru: athletic, neat, and at the top of his class. His hair he wore parted slightly on the left. He had a heart-shaped face and serious mouth, and wide, piercing eyes framed by dark lashes that sometimes made him look a rather meek seventeen, but the other students knew not to be fooled by appearances. There was a confident air about him that put him above the rest of the crowd, and this ironically attracted the esteem of most of the class, who saw him as a sort of big brother to whom they could turn with their troubles, should they actually have need to disturb him. Though usually reserved, he was recognized as a natural leader, perfect for the position of student body president when he went into his third year. That did not mean he was the most straight-laced student in the school, but when, on the very rare occasion, he was caught doing anything of questionable morals, the academy dismissed it with good faith in his person—and, no doubt, in his parents' pocketbooks as well. He had only one rival in the whole place, and that was his classmate Fujisawa.

No less of an academic, Fujisawa's poise gave him the appearance of a revolutionary, a bohemian, with his hands in his pockets, a cocky tilt to the head, and his dark auburn hair in a fashionable, jagged cut—which presently stuck stubbornly to the sweat on the side of his face. His eyes were sharp, his brows dark and severe, and his mouth seemed permanently fixed in a clever sneer, yet his looks retained an alluring androgyny that no one could say he did not take full advantage of. But if he was not an outright rebel in act—his style merely came close to breaking school regulations, and his illicit ideas of fun were kept to the confines of the dorms and washrooms—he was at least in his philosophy, which was always pushing the envelope, shocking his classmates with his wild and logical conclusions. And yet, with his otherwise impeccable public manners, no one could ultimately say that he wasn't really an angel.

That is, more to the point, a wolf in sheep's clothing. Izuru would have said he was a slut and a sadist. He would have been partly correct. His ambition and Fujisawa's were, after all, and always had been two sides of the same coin. Theirs was a philosophy of take or be left with nothing. Neither could deny it was little more than this shared narcissistic leaning that had brought them, with all their mutual distrust, together in the first place.

"_Naa_, Okazaki. . . ." The sly look had returned to Fujisawa's face, but he asked innocently, "What did you think of the new teacher?"

"Mm? Which one?" Izuru feigned ignorance.

"You know which one. The Christian history replacement. Mitani."

"Oh." Izuru rolled onto his stomach. He made nothing of the gesture, but in fact he suddenly felt vulnerable speaking of the man as exposed as he was. "He seems all right, I guess. Not too interesting. At least he sounds easy, but who knows with those types. You know, talking about how we should motivate ourselves—'as Japanese, as Christians!'"

"Heh. Yeah. You don't suppose Father Robert put him up to that godawful speech, do you?"

"I'm just relieved he didn't start in on 'the full moon in autumn' or something."

"'O bright, bright, bright, bright and bright, bright moon!'" Fujisawa said laughing. But on second thought, "I don't know. Any teacher who can romanticize torture like that can't be all that bad."

"Come on. He's a square."

"Tch." Suddenly serious, Fujisawa turned away to nurse the cigarette by himself.

But Izuru hadn't meant what he said. He wasn't even sure why he had said it.

—

Mitani arrived at class the next day just as the second bell was ringing. His loose-leaf notes were wedged between the pages of his textbook, ready to fall out at a careless tilt, and though he tried to make nothing of it he was short of breath. Yet, though he must have been in a hurry, at the same time it could be said that he seemed somewhat more solidly in his element compared to the day before. One able to make the comparison might have wondered which was his truer nature, because in this light he seemed even more like a university graduate student than a professor of any sort.

Dropping the book on the lectern and running a hand through his hair, he said without preamble: "I know history can be a boring subject to study, any way it's presented. I find that somewhat backwards myself, because when you think about the events and philosophies that have shaped the world into what it is today, how much they meant to the people living through them, you'd find history isn't boring at all but incredibly dynamic and wonderful and . . ." A sigh. "Frustrating. I can't guarantee I'll be able to convey them as well as that, but I will try to make this class as interesting as I can, if you all will just bear with me. . . ."

The whole tone of this disclaimer was so different from his introductory speech that Izuru could not help his fascination at seeing another side to Mitani's person. Against this stubborn will, he could feel his esteem for the young teacher slowly begin to grow within himself.

"I was told your last professor brought you up to the twelfth century before he left," Mitani began as he sorted through his material. "I guess we'll start off with some review of last term. Anyone care to remind us where we left off?"

Shyly at first, the students volunteered what they remembered, vague as that often was. It was the first official day of class, after all, and even if they daydreamed or drew in their notebook margins in lecture tomorrow, it was the benefit of the doubt they gave their new instructor on that first day. Mitani wrote what they supplied him on the blackboards and added dryly-delivered anecdotes in an attempt to lighten the mood. The rise of the Holy Roman Empire in Europe, the crusades to take back the Holy Land, the riches gained by Rome and Venice and the great works of the monasteries, the Great Schism with the Eastern church and mounting fear of Doomsday. Though usually an active participant in class discussions, Izuru held back from this one and was content to observe. If he were honest, however, he might have said it wasn't just the material he was taking in. He was quite familiar with that already.

The class time went by too quickly, but before it was over, Mitani handed out their reading assignment for the rest of the calendar year, what he said was one of his favorite novels: _The Name of the Rose_ by Umberto Eco. It was a thick, intimidating book riddled with untranslated Latin, and many of the students groaned when they got it. Their displeasure was even more obvious when they learned it was a piece of historical fiction based entirely around a monastery in northern Italy. In his well-meaning way, Mitani tried to encourage them by saying it was in fact a detective story; and Fujisawa's grin widened knowingly, the same look coming over his features as when he suggested something utterly lewd. His reaction, and Mitani's more innocent enthusiasm for the book, lent it a strange weight in Izuru's hands that must have been akin to the feeling the illusive tome in the novel sent through the bodies of the novices who longed for it.

He was the last to leave the room when the bell rang for lunch, and Mitani said to him, rather matter-of-factly, as he moved past the lectern to the exit, "Excuse me, um . . . Okazaki is it?"

The gentleness and uncertainty with which he said that—as though he wasn't sure if he really wanted to know, or was trying overly hard to sound uninterested—took Izuru by surprise, so that he only managed an awkward, affirmative, "Mm."

"I hear you're the captain of this class."

"That's right."

"That's good to know. . . ." There was a tense moment in which Izuru was unsure whether he should excuse himself or ask what his teacher wanted. With his hair in his eyes, it was difficult to tell even where Mitani's attention really lay. He said, "What you said yesterday—"

"I didn't mean anything by it," Izuru said, suddenly and inexplicably self-conscious. It wasn't like him to be apologetic.

But Mitani smiled. "Actually, I thought it was very appropriate."

Izuru didn't know what to say. Though it seemed in that brief moment as though Mitani had reached out to him, even only a little bit, he couldn't be sure that the meaning he gleaned from his professor's words was not in fact arisen from within himself. The truth was, it had affected Izuru somehow, to find himself alone with Mitani and hear that man speak his name in that same gentle but hesitant tone he used to speak the names of kings and popes and heretics. Perhaps it was the normal amount of awe for a particularly genuine mind that often possesses a student that possessed Izuru then.

Surely, he thought, it would fade with Mitani's novelty.

—

But it only seemed to grow.

It was hardly two weeks into the latter term that he was struck by a new realization about Mitani. The deciduous trees around campus had a mangy look and were dropping their leaves at a heartbreaking rate, but they were glorious and even managed to promise spring's renewal in their deaths, like the burnt relics of martyrs that fascinated the new teacher.

It was a strange affinity that Izuru realized, a curiosity he could not quite describe. Like an affliction, it had seemed it wasn't there one day, but the next it was constantly resurfacing in his mind, nagging at him, so that he wondered how he had ever been without it. He wondered how—in that first long week and a half—he had never noticed Mitani in the same way he did now. It was as if he were seeing the real Mitani for the first time—as though there were two Mitanis: one, the dodgy newcomer who had blushed when the students asked him personal questions, and raked a nervous hand through his overgrown hair—who had appeared hardly older than they were and kept his distance with a well-pressed suit and polite language; the other, confident in his knowledge and passionate for the subject, keen with the students, and sincere even in his humorless jokes, singing the psalms in mass with the ritual solemnity they seemed naturally to deserve. These two personalities, though one might think them rather exclusive, melded so humanly together—a seamless combination of optimism and fallibility, kindness and distance—that they made, in Izuru's eyes, his professor's character seem more admirable than his own.

He knew after that first day of class, though perhaps it took him longer to understand it, that he wanted nothing more that term than to make that man proud of him.

The thought did cross Izuru's mind that it was merely his personal attraction that made Mitani stand out in such a manner. While the other boys admired Mitani and seemed to look forward to his class more than any other, they could not have seen in him quite the same qualities that Izuru did. However, in the fierce strength of his conviction, he decided it was they who lacked insight, not that Mitani was in fact not as saintly as Izuru perceived him to be.

—

It was three days into the latter term when Father Robert went to the chapel to prepare for that morning's service, and was startled to see someone already there. The young man's back was turned to him as he stared at the stained glass windows along the side of the nave, so the priest did not recognize him at first, only noted that the stranger sported a short ponytail that was not permitted of the students. Visitors would often come from Nagasaki on the weekends for a tour or to hear the Sunday service, and he thought this man might be one of them until he remembered being notified of a new professor who would be arriving to take over the Christian history class. Of course, even the curve of the man's back exuded that contemplative nature he had seen in those in training to be priests. It was an idealistic nature indicative of youth. He had lost it long ago himself.

He willed his heart to slow itself, something that seemed to take longer these days, but the young man had given him quite a start. He coughed softly to alert the other to his presence.

Mitani spun around. His face lit up in embarrassment as he began to apologize. "It's all right," the priest interrupted him. "Please, keep doing whatever you were doing. Don't let me interrupt. We gave each other a bit of a fright, though, didn't we?"

Mitani reddened. "I suppose so. I'm sorry I didn't say anything, but I didn't see anyone when I came in. I was told the chapel here holds many reproductions of famous art pieces," he said. "I was hoping to get a chance to see them when there was no one around. But if you'd rather I came back later—"

"Don't be ridiculous. The church's doors are always open to the faithful. Anyway, I could use the company. You're the new Christian history teacher, correct? The one who's replacing Professor Segawa?"

"That's right, Father. Please, call me Mitani."

"Well then, Professor Mitani," said the priest as he shook the young man's hand, "I'm Father Robert, but you must have been told that by now. You have an interest in art?"

"Yes. Very much so." The young man finally relaxed at that question. "I wrote my thesis on the Carolingian Renaissance. It's amazing, what they were able to accomplish in those times, when we imagine how innocent men were when it came to the sciences. But back then it wasn't about what you could build but how well you could inspire. Just the word, Christendom, held so much power. . . ." He glanced up at the windows for another moment, drawn to the brilliant colors in the first morning light. "Robert is a French name, isn't it?" And Mitani said in French, "You have hardly any accent. How long have you lived in Japan, Father?"

"All my life. My parents moved here before the war. Your pronunciation is very natural," the priest humored him; then, switching back to Japanese, said, "Do I really have that much of an accent?"

"No—not really." Still a bit flustered from the compliment, Mitani said, "To tell the truth, it was a lucky guess. I don't know the language that well."

"Modesty. You've never been to France?"

"I've never had the time."

"Now that you're a full-time professor here, I doubt that will get any better." Now that they had cleared the air between them, when Father Robert began to prepare for the morning service, Mitani followed him. "Still, you should go to Paris when you have a chance. If you like art, you will love it. I myself was fortunate to study theology there when I was your age—"

He grunted suddenly as he lifted a heavy stack of missals. Mitani quickly stepped in to take the books from him, and cast a worried look at the priest when he put a hand to his chest and breathed deep. "Are you all right, Father?"

"Fine, fine." Father Robert waved away his concern. "Every once and a while this old heart of mine gives me trouble. Nothing to worry about." They placed a few stack's worth of books in the pockets in front of the pews, and then the priest sat with a sigh and gestured for Mitani to join him. Studying his person, Mitani had made him out to be more robust. He had a wide but lean frame under the black costume, that of someone who might once have been fairly muscular, and a stern face with the shaggy eyebrows of a philosopher. Mitani asked out of curiosity, in the innocent and forward way of someone born generations after, "Were you in Paris during the war?"

He could not tell if the priest's chuckle was amused or offended. "Do I look that old to you?" he said. "I was still in primary school then. My family and I were interned near Kumamoto for the last few years of it. We were lucky, actually."

Father Robert related all this to Mitani as calmly as though he were thoroughly removed from that experience, simply telling someone else's story, and Mitani regretted asking such a question that was obviously sensitive now that he thought about it. _We were lucky. . . ._ He wasn't from the Nagasaki area himself, but he could imagine the relief those who had escaped the bomb must have felt. And the guilt. In a situation like that, he thought, you would feel fortunate and—perhaps always wondering, Why me?—want to live this kind of life out of a sense of calling.

A life of service. That was the kind of life he had wanted to lead as a teacher.

Mitani could only nod. Suddenly he held so much respect for the man. He was glad he had come to this school, whose staff also had such an interesting history.

Father Robert did not seem to notice his sudden solemnness, and turning to Mitani, said, "In those days, boys knew the meaning of respect and obedience. They had a sense of higher duty. It was a matter of pride and personal worth, being an upright citizen. Times were hard and everyone had their responsibilities, but our characters were made stronger for it. I wonder sometimes if things aren't too easy now, too complacent."

It seemed odd to Mitani that the priest might actually be praising the war mentality he had grown up learning to criticize. Could someone who had been interned in his own country actually have those kinds of sentiments? "I don't know. . . ." he said half-heartedly for lack of anything better.

"You have to keep a close eye on adolescent boys these days, Professor," the priest said, wagging his index finger at the pew in front of them. "Especially here. You may not think it necessary. This is a Catholic school, therefore the students must be good Christian boys, right? Well, who am I to say. I don't always like it, and I certainly don't condone it, but you should be warned. You'll find out sooner or later. This is an academy for rich folks to send their spoiled sons to. The severity of the family's faith is of less concern to the administrators than whether they can afford a generous donation on top of the tuition. Consequently there are things that go on, _behaviors_, that the faculty finds it best to turn a blind eye to. Nobody wants to lose their position, you understand."

Mitani smiled uncertainly. "You make it sound like the professors here are afraid of the students."

"Not afraid so much as their hands are tied. However, that doesn't excuse their moral cowardice. Normally I'd agree with the Ministry: At least they have the power and the good sense to instill the right values into our educational system. But ultimately it comes down to the teacher's responsibility. I believe you are in a unique position, Professor. I heard about your introductory speech, and now that I can put a face to the words, I'm sure you meant every word of it. Your youth makes you trustworthy, influential. You have to keep these boys in line or they will fall into disorder. I mean physical and spiritual disorder. It is our duty and our job as educators to instill morals in them, and fill the ethical void these times make in their souls in whatever way we can. It never ceases to amaze me how society keeps functioning decade after decade given the declining moral standards of Japan's youth—"

Perhaps the priest noticed he was starting to preach. He said in a gentler tone, "Well, in any case, I do hope you take my advice."

Mitani studied the old priest's profile, with its deep lines that alternated between making the man look kindly and stern. Sitting there beside him, it might have been the first time the question entered Mitani's mind: What am I supposed to make of this place? What am I truly supposed to be here?

Moreover, what had he really expected to accomplish by coming here? He was no longer sure how realistic it was to believe he could mold in the student body's collective mind an appreciation for history that matched his own, nor had he given much thought to the politics of the education system. Had he erred in his idealism?

Finding himself suddenly disoriented by his uncertainty, Mitani nonetheless told the priest, "I will take it to heart, Father."

—

Morning mass was a solemn affair under the strict gaze of Father Robert. Some of the students would joke that he must have had eyes in the back of his head, not to mention superhuman hearing, because it seemed that nothing even in the farthest pews back escaped his detection, even when his face was turned toward the altar. It was the fear of having to do penance for disrupting the service that so effectively put religion into the boys—during the hour or so they spent in the chapel, at least. Father Robert took his authority very seriously, expounding the glory of God in the highest and the fire and brimstone that awaited the sinners with a zealousness that was easily mistaken for anger. No doubt it was partly anger guiding his oration, and disappointment in the behavior he saw as straying from God. Cursing and taking the Lord's name in vain. Showing blatant disrespect for their elders. Being caught with contraband in the dorm rooms and filling the washrooms with the smell of cigarettes. And what was worse, fornication—their minds had turned off of God and onto sinful and trivial pleasures. In his passion for the Word, perhaps it was that he wanted to save their souls that Father Robert was often so harsh. Or perhaps he merely believed as so many of his generation did: that they were all little devils by nature, teenage boys, delinquents, and could not be trusted to use common sense, if they even had it. And because he was powerless to do anything about that matter in the classroom environment, he took it out on the boys in the only way he could: in sermon.

As they sang the hymns, the students' voices echoed in the huge space, off the cold stone walls and high groin-vaulted ceiling. Behind the plain altar hung the crucifix supported by four angels, perhaps to represent the four gospels or the four corners of the world, or simply because three would have been too few and five too many. Their faces were all calm and forgiving as a buddha's, like the statue of Mary and the Christ child that stood in the alcove. Even the face of Jesus on the cross showed no real human suffering: It was an emotional blank like the rest, if only a bit more depressing. The morning light that filtered through the tall stained glass windows threw the faces in relief, making them appear more magnificent than the gold-leafed pine wood that they were actually made of. In one window, the school's patron, St Michael, prepared to do battle with a dragon representing Satan in the sky above a royal chapel, of which theirs was only a modern imitation.

The homily would start when the hymn ended, and with it Father Robert's rant du jour. Rather than sit through it, Izuru slipped out of the pew and crossed himself, confident he would not be missed by the staff whose gazes sat rapt upon the altar. Even if they did see him leave, they would not say a word. They did not share Father Robert's convictions, having long ago given up that futile struggle; but the trust that accompanied being the captain of his class was convenient in that regard, too.

Izuru made his way down the hallway off the narthex to the toilet. The sounds of the students' voices raised in praise faded behind the door, replaced by the demure tap of his shoes on the tiles, and the hush of ragged breathing issuing from one of the stalls. "Hey, Fujisawa," Izuru said loudly, "I want to talk to you."

Behind the closed door, someone was trying to mask his presence by holding his breath, but it only made his situation more obvious.

"Don't stop, it's just Okazaki," Fujisawa murmured to his shy companion, refusing to miss a beat. Surely as Izuru could recognize him by his breathing, Fujisawa knew Izuru's footsteps, if not his voice. He whispered something else, so low that it did not even echo in the small room, and chuckled. There came a shuffling of feet, then a short sigh. Then several, increasing in volume and frequency, from two separate throats, until neither cared any longer if they were overheard.

"Ah—!" Fujisawa cried out once; and Izuru knew as he studied his own face in the mirror, just as certainly as if he were on the other side of the stall door, how his classmate braced himself against the wall above the toilet as he shuddered, and pushed back against his companion. There was a moment of breathless silence following, then the unmistakable sound of zippers being zipped and the toilet flushing. A third-year emerged from the stall, refusing to meet Izuru's eyes except for a quick glare as he briefly rinsed his hands and checked his reflection.

"Shame on you, skipping mass," Izuru said when he had left. "You'll go straight to Hell for that."

His tone was laced with sarcasm, and Fujisawa laughed. He took his time emerging from the stall, satiated and tucking his shirttails back into this trousers. "You wanted to see me?"

"I just had a thought."

"What, and you had to share it with me right away?"

Fujisawa's sneer was wasted on Izuru, however, who ignored it.

"I've been thinking about it for a while," he said. "I don't think we should wait until third year to lead the student council."

A shade of skepticism touched Fujisawa's features. "What brought this about?"

"Lust for power." Izuru had meant it sarcastically, but his straight delivery made them both wonder if he wasn't telling the truth. "Revenge, perhaps, if that works for you. Either way, I don't see why we should wait, and have it handed to us on a silver platter. One more term won't make any difference. We deserve it more than those third-years that are running things. Everyone knows it; we may as well prove it. Now."

Fujisawa stared past him with a look of indecision.

"Just think," Izuru said, "you could be lording it over Kaburagi instead of the other way around."

Fujisawa couldn't help a wide grin that spoke of things Izuru should not have known. "How is that any different from the way things are now?" he said meaningfully.

"It doesn't have to stop at the student body." Izuru folded his arms. Now that he had Fujisawa's attention, he felt justified in taking his time. "I did some research. The student council's charter, the official document from when it founded—no one's read it in a long time. They don't know that in it is the proof of what everyone considered just an old legend, that the terms of this charter give the student council leaders more authority than even the professors, and even this school's administrators have no choice but to turn a blind eye to their goings on."

"Are you serious?" Fujisawa laughed. "Show me," he said, and shoved his hands under Izuru's jacket, searching for the document—or only pretending to—and backing him against the sink.

Izuru gasped. He was in no mood for playfulness at that moment, in that place. A serious shove made his classmate stop.

"I don't have it with me," Izuru told him. He lowered his voice to a murmur.

"But you will let me see it."

"Of course."

"Otherwise how will I know that you aren't just playing me?"

Izuru turned away, and Fujisawa could not be certain if it wasn't just his classmate's response to his proximity. It was both arousing and intimidating, how he had trapped Izuru between the sink and his hips; and the thought of winning themselves that power seemed to produce in them both a very real, physical lust. So it was reluctantly that Fujisawa took a step back. "You said 'we,'" he said, "but you didn't tell me what was in it for you. Two-A class captain isn't good enough for you now?"

"Why should I settle?" Izuru answered with a queer solemnity. "I could have the chance to mold Saint Michel into whatever I want it to be. And it looks good on a college application—"

"You mean, whatever _we_ want it to be," Fujisawa corrected him.

Izuru smiled. "You're in then?"

"I'd like to have a look at this mysterious charter first."

"Meet me at the rocks after class and all shall be revealed. Now, if you'll excuse me, I don't want to miss communion." His good mood returning, Izuru edged past Fujisawa, and the look that passed between them swore the latter to secrecy.

—

What the students referred to simply as the rocks was a piece of shoreline that faced the north where there was little beach to speak of, where large boulders jutted out into deep water to break the tide. It was not so much inaccessible as unsuspect, as it was secluded by the high wall that rose behind it and supported the island's man-made infrastructure. It was not easy to spy on that strip of rocky beach from the dorms above, an advantage which lead directly to its popularity. The older students went there to smoke in the warmer months, during which time it tended to become a hot spot of initiation, but the adults either did not notice or pretended not to. Now that a cold wind was blowing off the water, the two found it abandoned except for the occasional crab or gull.

Izuru removed the charter from his satchel with the care one afforded an ancient document that might crumble in the slightest wind. In truth, it was not nearly so old; the leather portfolio was worn around the edges, but the only sign of age inside was the dated type-written print and faintly yellowed paper. He handed it to Fujisawa, who immediately skimmed its contents with the same amount of care.

"It was drafted in the late-'seventies, a couple years after the school was finished," Izuru said. "As far as I know, no one's really read it in over a decade, aside from the basics. They've been reprinted so many times, nobody thought there was any need to refer back to the original. If you ask me, I think the older professors probably wanted it to be forgotten."

"If that's the case, how did you get ahold of it?" Fujisawa said.

"I just did a little favor for one of the librarians. I never realized how stressful it was for a young woman to do part-time in an all-boys school."

Fujisawa snorted at his mock-pity.

"Almost twenty years. . . . That seems like so long ago, but it really wasn't."

"Well, it was a lifetime ago."

Even with this knowledge, there was a certain air of mystery about the whole matter. When one thought about it, high school turnover was so short, a mere three years, that it felt as though time had indeed been stretched out in Saint Michel's enclosed world. In that way, it was difficult to fathom that any of their professors could be old enough to have seen the days of the student council's beginning, even though it was barely twenty years thence.

"There are no rules in there against a second- or first-year being president," Izuru said.

"We've always known that."

"Yes, but we always thought that meant _running_. What first-year is going to win in a gentleman's race against a senior?"

Fujisawa looked up from the page with an anticipatory smile.

"The charter details another way whereby an underclassman might become a leader," Izuru explained from memory as he looked out over the bay. "It's rather archaic but efficient. A student may challenge a member of the student council to a duel, and if he should win, the position of the man he bested becomes his. That way the student body can be certain it really does have the best man representing them. It's simple Darwinian theory. What entails a duel isn't exactly clear—I mean, it doesn't say if it should be literally with swords or what—except that it should be one-on-one."

Now he turned to Fujisawa with a gleam in his eye and said, "If we can defeat the president and vice-president, the council is ours. And between the two of us, I have no doubt we can do it."

"And what do you suggest we do?"

Izuru bit his lip in thought, but he had already worked it out long ago. "One of us will have to take on Kaburagi. The other takes Kawada."

"And how do you propose breaking this to them?" Fujisawa indicated the document. "Obviously we can't just hand this over and hope it remains intact. This may be sacred stuff, but I can't guarantee the third-years on the council will necessarily take it that way."

"Then we'll just have to beat them soundly enough to where they have no other choice."

Fujisawa regarded him blankly for a moment, following some train of thought. Then he said, just as Izuru had predicted after his run-in with the current student council president that morning in the restroom during mass: "I'll take Kaburagi, if it's all the same to you. I want to see the look on his face when he gets his ass handed to him by a second-year. That's the only way I can guarantee it." He grinned. "You understand."

—

What Fujisawa could not have known was that Izuru had another motive for revealing what he had, and it was inherently a selfish motive. Although it was true that Izuru's conscious intent was on molding Saint Michel to his own desires, that explanation was no more than a rational survival mechanism: His real plans were not so holistic as that.

From the start, he was well aware of the attention that Mitani paid the student council leaders. He watched from afar as his professor held intense discussions with them outside of class; and though the subjects of those discussions were unknown to him, the laughs or flashes of insight they occasionally shared were not.

It bothered Izuru. Someone as honest and genuine as his professor deserved better company than theirs. He deserved someone who had more than just a feigned interest in the subject he was so passionate about, someone who did not repeat names and dates just for the air of intelligence it lent him—someone who did not strive to build a relationship with Mitani simply in the belief it would earn him a better grade at the end of the term than the man he had replaced was willing to give. And it bothered Izuru that Mitani did not see through their self-serving deceit.

Or perhaps he did and his character simply would not allow him to show it. Strange how that only made Izuru feel worse for his teacher. It was not like him to empathize with a member of the staff, or pity them. Yet, if he were to be honest, he could not deny the vein of possessiveness that had influenced his own decisions as of late. The resentment he harbored toward the third-years and his plan to dethrone them was not completely separate from his inability, or unwillingness, to imagine Mitani teaching any class but 2-A. He was now convinced that since the first day of lectures when Mitani had spoken to him alone, they had shared a connection. The encouraging glances in class, the notes in the margins of his papers that made it seem Mitani could read his mind were only further evidence of this. The only problem was that Mitani had yet to realize it. Izuru had no doubt if he became president of the student council his professor would have no choice but to confront this truth. And how much more proud would he be if Izuru accomplished the leap on his own merits now, rather than having the position handed to him in his third year.

There was something about the idea of the duel that recalled a romanticized sense of honor and glory for Izuru, and nostalgia for the days of the samurai or the crusades of medieval Europe—when life and death moved at a faster pace, and immortality could be won with one noble deed. Indeed, the excitement that followed the intimate knowledge of one's own mortality was inescapable, despite that Izuru had nothing so lethal in mind for this duel.

He would respect Fujisawa's claim and focus his attentions on Kawada, the current vice-president of the student council. It was a better match. Kawada was an ignoramus; he had a habit of flaunting his knowledge and its shortcomings at the same time, as if he were purposefully degrading himself and then asking everyone to still take him seriously. Izuru in contrast was calculating, and never said anything that might make him look stupid. Kawada was a young man hungry for validation; his father was president of an automobile company. Izuru's was a corporate attorney. Kawada was a star member of the track team; Izuru's parents had had him enroled in martial arts lessons from a young age.

And Kawada was one against whom Izuru had no personal qualms other than a desire for the station he held. Professors said that if not for Kaburagi and his own submissive character, Kawada would have been running things. It was against Izuru's nature to settle for anything less than he wanted.

What he wanted now was a crowd. Luckily, this time of the year, Kawada could usually be found playing basketball in the gym with his classmates. There were plenty of witnesses when Izuru made his appearance.

He sat himself down on one of the bleacher steps without a word, an air of purpose about him that the young men playing on the hardwood could not ignore for long. "What are you doing here, Okazaki?" Kawada said when there was a break in the game. "Doubt you've come to play with us. I always figured you more for the type who likes to watch."

His classmates laughed along at the implication, but as far as Izuru was concerned the jibe did not deserve the breath wasted on it. "Actually, Sempai," he said, "I've come to challenge you to a duel."

"A duel?" How could that word not inspire some incredulity in this day and age? "The hell would you want to do that for?"

"Your seat in the student council."

Startled by Izuru's seriousness, and by his ready answer, the third-years lost interest in their game. The tension in the gym was suddenly as thick as the smell of sweat, and something more exciting seemed to be brewing. Kawada approached the bleachers as Izuru stood.

"That's ridiculous," he said.

"Is it?" said Izuru. "According to Saint Michel's student council charter, a council member may be challenged for his seat by anyone who wishes to do so. If he loses, he is required to abdicate his seat to the winner."

Kawada snorted. "There's nothing like that in there." But Izuru sensed his doubt.

"It's in the original. The particular article has been shortened in your copy, but remains unamended. You can check if you like." Izuru pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "I have the original in my room. We could go there together after we settle this—"

"Right. You need to work on your pickup lines, Okazaki, 'cause I ain't going anywhere with you. Why don't you get this alleged original first and bring it here so I can see it?"

"What difference will it make? If I'm bluffing, it's no skin off your back."

Kawada considered the proposition. "You better not be wasting my time, Okazaki," he said after a few moments. Apparently he found something appealing about the idea of soundly, and publicly, beating the second-year. Or else he couldn't bring himself to refuse before a dozen pairs of waiting eyes. Either way, Izuru doubted he would have accepted if he saw his underclassman as much of a threat. "What'll it be? Horse?"

Izuru pretended to think it over as well as he stepped onto the court, sized Kawada up. "I was thinking something more hands-on. Less gentleman-like."

"Like what?"

"Does that mean you accept the conditions of the duel and any possible ramifications?" Kawada impatiently nodded, and Izuru allowed himself a small smile. "I want you to pin me—knock me down," he said, "until I can't get up. Use whatever method you feel comfortable with."

"Jesus, you _are_ a sick son-of-a- . . ." The vice-president continued to regard him as though waiting for the punchline of a bad joke. Izuru let him stew. He removed his jacket, tossing it in the direction of the bleachers. His manner all the while was so casual, it did little to put one in the fighting spirit. "You're serious?" Kawada asked.

"I'm serious."

Kawada snorted and turned as if to go, dribbling the ball before him on the gymn floor as if the whole thing was not worth his time. Then, without warning, he spun and launched the ball at his underclassman, hoping to catch Izuru off guard so that he might not see the punch that followed it until it was too late.

Unfortunately for him, Izuru saw it coming. He ignored the sting of the ball as it bounced off his shoulder, caught Kawada's incoming wrist with one hand, and landed an upper cut to his jaw with the other. The vice-president reeled back, holding the sore spot in disbelief. Okazaki Izuru wasn't the type who looked like he could land a hit so easily.

That disbelief only last a second, however, before the desire to get revenge for his public humiliation overpowered anything else. Kawada rushed at Izuru again; and again Izuru found a handhold, this time throwing the two of them down on the hard, wooden floor.

They grappled, Kawada struggling to gain an advantage over his junior so that he might knock him into submission. But Izuru would not allow Kawada out of his own grip for more than an instant. He caught a knee or two in his side, but nothing that particularly slowed him down. An observer would have been able to see from the focused expression on his face that he had a plan, one which he simply would not allow Kawada to thwart; in the meantime, he could be patient, literally roll with the punches, even if, to the other third-year students watching from the sidelines—busy cheering on their classmate and checking to see that no teacher was coming to break up the fun—Izuru did not seem to have any clear advantage.

That did not stop him, however, from getting Kawada in a choke hold. Although he was technically still on top, the vice-president's struggling grew feebler as he realized that this time he could not be able to shrug out of it. The other students quieted, some swore, all trying to make something out of the mass of their tangled limbs and see if what they suspected was true, that a boy of Izuru's stature had managed to pin one of the third year's top athletes.

"Give up yet?" Izuru muttered into Kawada's ear. Through his gritted teeth and heavy breathing, his voice nonetheless remained perfectly calm.

Still, Kawada resisted. "I'm not giving my seat up to a second-year for this," he grunted, renewing his effort to free himself. "Faggot bastar—"

Izuru shifted into a slightly better position, effectively cutting the other's mobility down another notch. Kawada's curse trailed off with a grunt as Izuru's arm dug deeper into his windpipe. He bent his knees, trying to gain some leverage from the polished floor as Izuru said to him, "You might want to reconsider. I'm not going to let you up until you surrender, so if that's really what you want, we could be here a while. Or, I suppose if you accidentally passed out in front of all these witnesses, that would settle whether I won without any doubt. . . ."

Kawada grunted in pain. One of his classmates, his eyes wide, said, "Jesus, Okazaki, you trying to kill him?"

That was all the prodding Kawada needed. "Okay . . ." he managed to gasp out, "you win. . . ."

"What was that?"

"I said, you win! You can be vice-president for all I care!"

Satisfied, Izuru released him and stood with all the ease and grace of a cat. Kawada rolled to his side on the floor, rubbing his own throat.

"That's all I needed to hear," Izuru said as he went to retrieve his jacket. He tugged his rumpled shirt into its proper place, and ran a hand through his hair, though he hardly looked like someone who'd just been grappling on a hard, wood floor. The grin on his lips could be called no less than devilish.

—

Things were different the next day, however, when Izuru dropped in on the student council in their offices, Fujisawa at his side like some sort of standard-bearer. In fact, the title would have fit him well, for it was the twenty-year-old document he held against his chest that the school would once again hold as sacred and worth abiding by in short time, if the two had their way. They already had about them the air of two rebels staging a glorious coup d'etat.

In sharp contrast, the looks on the faces of the student body president Kaburagi and Hinoki, the dorm chief, were sheer surprise. Kawada suddenly appeared nervous.

Somewhat surprised to see him himself, Izuru said, "Kawada, what are you doing here?"

"What are _you_ doing here, Okazaki?" said Kaburagi. "This isn't a meeting for class captains." He registered Fujisawa's presence with little more than a dark look, similar to the one he had given Izuru when they passed in the chapel toilet a few days before. Fujisawa grinned in response, like a child anticipating his favorite part of a well-known story.

Izuru narrowed his eyes. "I'm not here as class captain," he said. "I'm here to fulfill my duties as the new student body vice-president. Which is why, frankly, I'm a little surprised to see Kawada-sempai here. He didn't inform you two of the situation?"

Hinoki, a deceptively studious-looking young man, glanced at his fellow officer from behind his glasses. "What situation?" he said.

"We had a deal. Didn't we, Sempai?" Izuru's penetrating gaze never wavered from Kawada's. "You're not trying to back out of it, are you, after all that trouble?"

Kawada returned his stare awkwardly, too stubborn to look away and too cowardly to step up to the challenge that was just as clear in Izuru's eyes as his words.

"What the hell are you talking about, Okazaki?" Kaburagi said instead, his drawl laced with the decadence of idleness that is the natural outgrowth of aristocratic upbringing—the ugly, deep-rooted arrogance of the noble title his family was forced to give up after the war evident in his insolent slouch behind the cherry desk.

It was exactly what Izuru and Fujisawa hated about this student council, perhaps because they embodied that same sense of righteousness themselves in what they could only argue was a purer variation born of capitalism, of the meritocracy. Kaburagi's air of invincibility, transparent and feeble next to his own, made Izuru smile. Their so-called president did not know what it meant to be truly fearless. Izuru cooed, "I'll show you."

They handed over the document. It was the complete and unabridged charter that was written in the late 1970s, they told Kaburagi, and it guaranteed the student council officers even more power over the student body than they already assumed. "The headmaster and some of the older professors we asked assured us it was genuine and valid," Fujisawa said in answer to the obvious question, "albeit reluctantly. You can see for yourself why they wouldn't want to be entirely forthcoming with something like this. It would make us kings."

"Who's talking about kings?" said Kawada. "If the officers of the student council have ultimate authority, we don't have to put any stock in these duels if we decide not to."

"And violate the charter?" Izuru said, feigning shock. "The very thing that gave you that power? That would be like if creation itself opposed God, or if a brain decided it didn't need its body to live. It's heresy."

"We could always put the issue before the student body," Fujisawa added with a shrug. "I'm sure if they knew the particulars of the case, they wouldn't have any problem determining which side was in the right. I don't think you want to bring their opinions into a matter of this magnitude."

What he did not need to remind the student council officers was that outside their class there were few who would not call for a deposition of any one of them, given the opportunity. Kaburagi for his cruelty, Hinoki for his corruption, Kawada for his sheer unpopularity. . . . It would be a peasant rebellion. The three of them would not admit it, but they well understood that these two second-years held their fates in their hands, and would not relinquish them without a fight. Kaburagi's snide smile seemed to falter, and Hinoki must have been wondering if he would be next as he glanced uncertainly at Kawada. To him, at least, it seemed Kawada was a condemned man.

"I trust you'll make the right decision. If you don't uphold this one essential article, President Kaburagi," Izuru said pointedly, "Dorm Chief Hinoki, what's the point of any of them existing?"

—

Needless to say, the remaining officers turned on their disgraced comrade like a body does an infection, and Izuru received the single room that was the privilege of the position of vice-president in a matter of days.

He was interrupted from his moving in that evening by a knock on the open door, and was not surprised in the least to see Fujisawa standing in the door frame, his characteristic sneer planted firmly on his lips. "So, this is your new room?" He gave a half-hearted whistle. "Must be nice to have a single. I would be jealous—if I weren't getting my own in a few days' time."

He entered the room and closed the door behind himself.

"What do you want?" Izuru said.

Fujisawa's smug grin remained more fixed than ever. "Is that how you greet someone who's done you a great favor? I suppose you would have found out from someone soon enough that Kaburagi has relinquished his position as president of the student body."

His news did not get much of a reaction, let alone the one he wanted. "You already heard."

Izuru responded with an ambivalent gesture.

"C'mon, Okazaki, what's wrong with you?" Fujisawa gave him a patronizing shake of the head as he closed the distance between them. "With him and Kawada out of the way there'll be no one to oppose us."

Izuru smiled coolly. "I'm glad to hear it. But you still haven't answered my question."

"I thought you might want to congratulate me."

"You thought you'd rub it in."

Fujisawa shrugged. What he really wanted, what Izuru gave him gladly, was something else. These pretenses were always so transparent. So he was not in the least taken aback when Izuru grabbed the back of his collar and pressed his parted lips to Fujisawa's. Fujisawa unbuttoned Izuru's jacket, slipping his hands underneath to rest them on Izuru's narrow hips. He didn't mind Izuru holding him in place, pushing his tongue into his mouth; it was a refreshing change of pace. It was only when Fujisawa moved to undo his trousers that Izuru stepped back. "Undress yourself," he said shortly.

Shrugging off his classmate's brusque mood as none of his business, Fujisawa began to do as he was told. Never mind that Izuru was watching him as though he expected Fujisawa to bolt at any moment.

Once Fujisawa had unbuttoned his shirt, Izuru ran out of patience, and his boldness turned to violent need. He pulled Fujisawa to him by his tie for another kiss, and pushed him back toward the bed. Small piles of neatly folded clothes, waiting to be put away, were crushed and wrinkled beneath their bodies. Izuru pushed Fujisawa down into the mattress by his shoulders and straddled his hips. Then, puzzling Fujisawa who had expected more, he did nothing else.

"How did you do it?" Izuru asked him.

"Does it really matter?" Fujisawa made a motion to sit up, but Izuru would not allow him. "Or is it some kind of turn on?"

"I want to know."

The smug smile returned to Fujisawa's lips. "We exchanged a few choice words at the kendo club meeting. I convinced him some evidence could be gathered and that it would be in his and his family's best interest if he quietly admitted defeat."

"What do you mean? That you threatened to sue him?" Izuru sounded unimpressed. His eyes narrowed. "I thought you were going to beat the shit out of him."

Fujisawa's smile wavered. "Sure, I could have done that. . . . But a duel of wits is pretty grueling, too, you know." He raised a hand, sliding it up along the inseam of Izuru's thigh. "What does it matter how I get the job done as long as I'm student body president?"

"_President_?"

The icy tone of Izuru's question made him freeze.

"Who said anything about _you_ being president?"

"You're joking, right?" Fujisawa said. "Hey, I was the one who got Kaburagi out of the picture. Since he was president, according to that document, I get his position."

"That depends. There is the question of whether you technically beat him or whether he simply stepped down."

"It doesn't matter! It's too late to be starting this bullshit now, Okazaki. If you wanted to be president so bad, you should have just challenged me when I said I would take Kaburagi. When you didn't, it seemed to me like we had a deal."

"And I thought you were just in it for revenge," Izuru said as he stared down his nose at Fujisawa. "We never had a deal. The only _deal_ was that we were going to take them out. I assumed it was obvious the next step would be to divvy up the spoils among us accordingly."

"Accordingly?"

"Yes. According to who is better suited for each position."

A low growl rose from somewhere inside Fujisawa. He tried to raise himself onto his elbows, but it was awkward with Izuru's weight planted firmly on his lower body.

"Now, since I was the one who found out about the charter and brought it back into the light of day," Izuru continued, "and the one who suggested the duels in the first place, I believe it's only fair I be entitled first pick. Not to mention that given our personalities and our respective standings with the student body and faculty, it simply makes sense that someone like me should be leader and someone like you my lieutenant, doesn't it?" He chuckled, adding, "After all, I am our class captain—"

"Not a chance in hell," Fujisawa snarled. "This is robbery, is what it is. I won fair and square." He moved to get up and push Izuru off of him, but Izuru refused to let him go. His knee in Fujisawa's gut pushed him back into the mattress, pinning him there. Fujisawa grunted at that sharp weight pressing into him. "Get off me, you traitor. You disgust me."

Izuru only smiled at the epithet. He wrapped Fujisawa's tie around his hand in what was almost an absent manner, gripping it fondly as he cocked his head. "Would you like to challenge me to a duel and solve the matter that way?" he said in a low voice. "Because I wouldn't mind. It might be kind of fun, actually. I should warn you, though, that I could accidentally kill you if you pushed me too far."

His fingers were cool as he ran them over Fujisawa's neck, a contrite look on his face that Fujisawa knew better than to trust. Even for being so slight, Izuru had always been the stronger of the two physically. But Fujisawa, for his part, was made of tougher stuff than either of the third-years they had defeated; he didn't come with the same overriding sense of self-preservation that they did. He had been cut from the same cloth as Izuru, and would not give up so easily. He met Izuru's gaze boldly, trusting that would say enough.

A small smile, wicked in its intention, appeared on Izuru's face as he bent to speak into Fujisawa's ear: "I _never_ planned on settling for anything less than president. Come on, you know me well enough by now to have expected that. You're dead wrong if you think I'm going to change my mind now, Fujisawa."

Though he could not help a grimace of discomfort whenever Izuru shifted his weight on that knee, Fujisawa could not bring himself to do anything but stare his classmate down. It killed him to give Izuru the satisfaction of seeing him give in. But on the other hand, Fujisawa had caught a glimpse of a side to his classmate that he knew nothing about, and could not be sure that Izuru would not follow through on his threats. Conceding to himself that there was little he could do at this time, Fujisawa finally raised a hand to the one that gripped his tie in a gesture of surrender.

That did not mean, of course, that in his heart he was defeated. The disgust Fujisawa had for himself at that moment and the resentment that burned within him over this betrayal ensured that the battle was far from over. Though neither would ever have said that they had been friends, some relationship had nonetheless existed between them that was now wounded beyond repair, beyond reconcile. Without words, an understanding passed between them that from this point on they would be mortal enemies.

—

The next morning as he was walking to class, someone called out to him, "Hey, Okazaki!"

Izuru turned, only to have a fist collide with his left cheek. "You asshole!" Fujisawa growled, with no concern for the students who gathered around them, some of whom automatically stepped forward to get between the two young men.

One of their classmates offered to help, but Izuru shrugged him off. "I'm fine," he said, though his cheekbone felt raw and hot as he touched it gently with the tips of his fingers. If he were honest, the punch had not shaken him as much as it might have coming from someone else, in a different situation. From Fujisawa, though, it was almost to be expected. "I guess I deserved that."

"Yeah, you're damn right you did. —Hey, I got it out of my system," Fujisawa said to the boys trying to hold him back.

In fact, it was Izuru they had a right to be worried about, though no one stepped forward to stop him from retaliating. After what had happened to Kawada and Kaburagi—and, after all, the power of rumor was greater than the truth—they probably expected Izuru to return the punch and a fight to break out. They were to be disappointed.

"This doesn't change anything," Izuru said. The onlookers could make of that what they may; this did not concern them. "I hope you realize that."

"Yeah." Fujisawa cracked a painful grin. "But I feel a hell of a lot better."

"Then I'll expect you in the student council's office after last bell. I'm calling a meeting to announce the changes officially." And Izuru left it at that, trusting there were enough witnesses for word to get around before the day was over.

At the meeting of the student council after class that day, he and Fujisawa appeared together at the head of the table as president and vice-president respectively. No one, not even Izuru, seemed to mind the bruise beginning to form under his eye. He wore it like it was a battle scar, and he fresh from the campaign. And victory. It was he who held the original copy of the student council's charter now, and who addressed those who were assembled.

Breaking with routine, he had insisted on a more open setting for his first speech, opening the event to other students and even faculty. The latter stood along the side of the room, stoic expressions on their faces as they knew not what to expect. Students peered eagerly into the room from the doorways, passing word along to those who could not see or hear clearly. Izuru did not see Mitani among the crowd, but it did more to encourage than daunt him to think of what his teacher would hear of this later.

He appeared before them part prophet and part circus ringleader, first seducing and then guiding the attention of his captive audience from one talking point to another. "It is through the grace of God," Izuru dared to say, "that we were able to overthrow our corrupt student government—to sever the head of the Beast, if you will—and we owe it to this." He held the charter enclosed in its old Moroccan leather portfolio above his shoulder, as though it were a relic that might bless them with some hidden light.

"In it are rules set down by our predecessors, the first students to graduate from this school, that the generations that followed forgot. They believed, and wisely so, that a student should have the right to challenge a leader if he thinks the founding values of this school have been neglected or abused, and that he could do a better job in upholding them as they were meant to be upheld. That, in short, is what we have done, in order that we may correct the moral stagnation that reigned under your former leaders, Kaburagi and Kawada. Saint Michel will soon forget their small, empty contributions, but we will make sure the vision of our predecessors is preserved for the classes of the future."

An observer might have wondered, if he had been privy to the secret goings on of these two young men who now stood before the school as though they were angels come down from on high to guard the Arc of the Covenant that was the charter, if there was not an element of hypocrisy to Izuru's speech. Couldn't it be that they only planned on using their offices for their own personal gratification? The question would not have been unfounded; but it was at the same time fair to say that Izuru—to say nothing of Fujisawa—truly believed what he said. Or, that he belived the activities in which he took pleasure in private, that hurt no one in the Pauline sense, were an issue separate from this and therefore exclusively compatable. They simply could not be compared to one another.

One might have wondered, too, if the students who listened would really be sold on such outdated ideas of propriety as those Izuru appeared to be peddling. The difference between his speech and Father Robert's liturgies was a simple matter of semantics. No doubt there were bound to be some third-years who had prospered under Kaburagi's wing the last term who would not go along with the new reigme without nurturing some deep misgivings; but they must have understood nonetheless that Izuru and Fujisawa's coup was about a greater issue, one that held a place of considerable respect among the student hierarchy:

The dealing out of dues.

As for the other students, whether they had been oppressed or not, one could say that they had been put under a kind of spell by Izuru's speaking. When he said they should take pride in being Christian students of such a renowned school, they were forced to think how lacking they had been in ways in which they could take pride before, and suddenly they longed to grasp that glory which he spoke of. Like it was sweet nutrition for their souls they only now realized were impoverished, when he said that they should live by the ideals of Christ in all aspects of school life, they truly wanted to feel the satisfaction of a salvation he seemed to promise would light up their hearts and academic records.

So, for the faculty, who every now and then nodded reluctantly at something profound Izuru had to say, this new student body president was in many ways a dream come true. They could not have known from where he got his inspiration—their memories were not that faithful—or even that it was borrowed in almost every respect. Perhaps they would not have cared, and would have praised Mitani even more for his influence if they knew how responsible he was.

Nor was there any way of knowing that Izuru had little intention to obey his own edicts. But just how, not even he could imagine at that time.

Nonetheless, the faculty formed a picture in their minds of two shining bastions of truth and beauty, of one crying out in the wilderness, another preaching to the crows, the two cutting edges of the proverbial double-edged sword of a holy tongue—a powerful, seraphic image that was precisely what Izuru and Fujisawa had started out with the intent to convey for themselves. If they could do almost anything they wanted before, they could get away with murder now, or worse. These were not leaders of a student democracy but monarchs. Kings who could denounce the very world if they wanted to, and two hundred young men would follow them into the abyss with hardly a question—like sheep to the slaughter, and their shepherds along with them.

—

"Hey, Sensei, wait up!"

Mitani looked up on his way back to the teachers' office. Though the call could have been meant for any of the professors here, somehow he recognized the tone of voice Izuru always used when he spoke to him. Does he use it with his other professors as well? Mitani wondered briefly, which in turn led him to wonder why it suddenly bothered him to think Izuru did.

The thought was swept from his mind, however, when his gaze alighted on the boy jogging across the square to join him. The autumn wind had been blowing lightly all day, and it tussled his hair and jacket as he raced to catch up, and scattered the brown-purple leaves of the plum trees that fell to the cobblestones like burnt scraps of paper behind him. In contrast to the decay of the season, Izuru's cheeks were flushed from the cold wind, and his eyes shown bright and fresh when he grinned open-mouthed to catch his breath. How exclusive that expression seemed, how utterly unlike the Izuru he usually allowed everyone to see. Not for the first time, it had an effect on Mitani, who felt priveleged to witness it.

He said perhaps a little too quickly, "I didn't get to tell you before, Okazaki, but congratulations on your becoming student council president. I heard what you said in the meeting yesterday, about how you plan to turn that office around."

"Yeah?" Izuru couldn't help himself. He beamed.

Mitani nodded. "Your goal to clean up the student body, and try to emulate the teachings of Christ in academic life—I'm sure that's exactly the kind of ethic the council's founders had in mind."

"I'm glad you think so." In truth, Izuru had not given much thought to his professor's reaction. He had not allowed himself to expect anything. After all, "It was you who inspired me, Sensei. If you want to know the truth of it. It wasn't just your lectures either. I believe you were right in saying we should be concerned about the role of faith in our futures. In fact," the words kept flowing all on their own, for fear of winding up with nothing to say, "that was what I wanted to talk to you about, the future—that is, if you're not too busy. Of course, you know I'll start looking into universities after the start of next term, and I was wondering—"

"I would gladly give you whatever help you need," Mitani said. Had he responded too quickly? he wondered immediately after, but Izuru smiled in gratitude.

When he turned briefly toward the sun, Mitani's gaze fell on the raw patch that remained below the boy's eye and the bruise that had formed around it. His eyes had been drawn to it ever since yesterday morning's lecture, but every time he had thought he might be caught he had quickly looked away, leaving a short pause in his lecture like a jitter in a recording. Now that they were outside of class, he ventured, "Okazaki, how did you . . . How did that happen?"

"Mm?" Izuru turned back to him. "Oh. It was nothing. I had a disagreement with someone is all. Lovers' quarrel."

Mitani started. A sudden warmth as the blood rushed to his skin. "What?"

"It was a joke," Izuru amended quickly. And a bad one, he chastised himself.

"You're not in any trouble, are you?" Mitani raised a hand as though to touch his wound, but then thought better of it. It would have been inappropriate, in or outside the classroom. But Izuru found himself wishing his professor had not been so self-conscious. "Does it hurt?"

Izuru put a hand to his cheek. "Not really. Like I said, it's nothing." He hated to be so short, but it just came out as such when he said, untruthfully, "I wish you wouldn't be so concerned about me, Sensei."

"Sorry." Mitani flashed a timid smile. "It's just that you're a conundrum to me, Okazaki. When I heard how you stood up to your upperclassmen, I couldn't help thinking what confidence and drive that must have taken, that I would never have had at your age. I'm proud of you."

Izuru felt his heart leap when Mitani said those words that he had thought he had wanted only to hear. Strange, but now, for reasons he could not explain let alone understand, it did not seem like enough.

"Your answers on exams, too, they radiate a real passion and understanding for the subject."

"You can tell that just by a couple of facts strung together in a sentence?" Izuru didn't know why he spoke with more cynicism than he felt, when what he really was was grateful.

Mitani's slight smile was strained by his tone. "Well, yes. Most students just repeat what the book says. I know I haven't been a teacher for long, and maybe I'm not very traditional in what I think is important, but I guess it's what you would call teacher's intuition. You should really share more of your thoughts in class."

Izuru looked away.

"And that's the thing I don't understand," Mitani went on. "You're so reserved in my lecture, but from everything I've heard about you from the other staff, and how you present yourself outside of my class . . . It seems like you're two different people sometimes. It's none of my business, but you are one of my brightest students—"

"There's no particular reason for it," Izuru said. Which was a lie, but then it would also have been a lie to blame shyness when it only manifested itself in one subject, in front of one professor. If only Mitani knew what kept him silent, and made his heart leap in his chest and his tongue retreat into the back of his throat every time he merely thought of being called upon, singled out by this man in front of everyone, in that same reverent tone of voice. . . .

He would laugh, I know it, Izuru thought, if I tried to tell him that the reason I won't speak in his class is because I like him. An answer like that would only make sense to a schoolgirl with a crush. However, "If it would please you if I said more—"

He was cut off by a gust of wind that swept down through the courtyard without warning. It was a gust so strong that for a heartbeat it threatened to lift them right off the ground, or at very least tear the books from their arms. Izuru shoved his hand deeper into his pocket and scrunched his shoulders against the chill; Mitani held his books and notes closer to his body. Other students clutched at their bags. It had been a rather still day, but now the red and gold leaves were blasted from the branches they clung to so delicately, for a moment whipping away across the pavement like they were trying to escape something.

A din rose up around them. As the wind began to let up, the gulls gathered on the rooftops began to cry out as one at the top of their lungs. Taking flight, they scattered against the clear blue sky, some shitting randomly as they went, which prompted boys in the courtyard below to cover their heads. Even when the birds settled down again, their cacophony grew louder and more complex as everyone in the flock joined in in communicating what human onlookers could only describe as their panic. There was something of a vague sense of unease, even distress, in their unsettled behavior. It seemed as if to warn one another of a nearby threat, albeit a dormant one if they were not abandoning their posts completely, like a shark slowly patrolling the sea floor.

Listening to their cries that split the air filled Izuru with an inexplicable sense of dread; and watching their movements along the tops of the buildings, he thought he almost felt some sort of presence in the wind, as ridiculous as such a thought was.

There was nothing there. As far as anyone could see, the gulls were the roof's only inhabitants, aside from an occasional crow. No matter how sudden, could what startled them really have been as simple as a strong gust of air?

"I wonder what that was all about," Mitani said beside him.

Izuru shivered, and not just from the cold. "Must have been the wind."

—

Meanwhile, hidden in the shadow of human ignorance, Focalor watched with avid interest.

Duke of Hell, and one-time angel of Heaven of the Order of Thrones, long had his name been cause for much fear and anguish. Known among humans as a destroyer of ships, who had drowned hundreds of thousands of men, and among his own as a lord of distinguished loyalty and extraordinary patience.

However, these last months had been spent stewing in outrage and disgrace, plotting against the bastard human who had so upset the natural hierarchy of his world. Attitudes had changed since the Dark Ages, when his kind was truly held in awe by mankind. He understood that he could not turn back the ways of their hearts, but this offense was beyond toleration.

By accident it seemed, that human had defeated their Dragon Cavalry Brigade Commander Surgatanus. And, according to their own laws, in doing so he gained the rank and title of Surgatanus. A mere human. A powerful one, yes, but did his victory not come with the help of his friends and guardian spirits? For this upset they should all have met a swift and final death. Focalor would have laughed if the very thought did not rile him so, compounded by his brethren's undying reverence for the laws they had made themselves and yet held sacred above all else, even reason. They would permit themselves to be lorded over by a _human_—they who owed their very fall to Heaven's fondness for that mortal race! Even though they complained and plotted means to usurp the offender, still they permitted it. His Lord even seemed amused by the idea, preparing himself to welcome the human under his wing.

His heedlessness disgusted Focalor.

But if it was the law that mattered, then the law he would obey. He would kill that man himself and rightfully claim the position he had coveted for so long. Though the idea of what Surgatanus might have seen in that creature's eyes before he met his own demise continued to plague him, Focalor had convinced himself his goal could not be too difficult to reach. Then, once he became Brigade Commander himself, he would be that much closer to the other goal he had almost given up on, the one that would take all his strength, that they had told him would never succeed: of returning with his legions to the throne that awaited him in Heaven.

Existence in the world of the living had corrupted him. It was only due to his hope that he was able to wallow in his watery lair all these months without incident, steeping his wizened body in the wastefulness of humans, drowning in his hatred of them, and repeating the name of that vile usurper in his heart—the name that made his skin crawl when it spilled from his Lord's lips: Tsuzuki Asato. He would never forget that name, not until its bearer was long erased from existence, crushed by his hands.

But in his current form, his ancient and tired shell of a body, he was no match for that man. No, in order to accomplish his goal he needed a fresh body through which he might channel his power to its fullest. And on top of that, he needed a lure.

He needed a human body.

He understood that it took a spiritual incident of significant magnitude on this Japanese island to summon this Tsuzuki, whose job it was to investigate those phenomenon that went against Meifu's laws of death. So Focalor would create a conundrum: He would cause a soul to disappear so perfectly even God himself would be lucky to find it again.

It was about that time that Izuru and Fujisawa had stunned the school by taking control of Saint Michel's student council in their second years. Their struggle inspired him. In either of their bodies he could be reborn and reach his ideal power. What was essential, what would make both the pact and his triumph over Tsuzuki complete, was desire. A desire equaling his own—for it was like a hunger that would destroy him, the threat of which motivated him like starvation motivates a wild animal to do the unconscionable in order to survive, if only for one more day.

He found this great desire in Okazaki Izuru.

Izuru who had everything a boy of his age could want. Wealth, a sure foot in the door of society, the finest education money could buy and the brilliant mind to appreciate it. He had the admiration of his classmates, for his character and looks; and it was with satisfaction that Focalor noted his top physical form and beauty. He was the perfect candidate, with all the attributes a devil could hope for, the last anyone would suspect.

And now Izuru was head of the student council. For all anyone could see, he should have been content. However, it was the wager that he still longed on which everything Focalor dreamed of rode.

He eavesdropped on Izuru's thoughts and discovered the boy lusted hopelessly after his professor, that meek intellectual Mitani. How obsessed he was, entertaining fantasies about the two of them in his dreams, both during the day, with his pitiful attempts to focus his mind on matters at hand, and at night when he would sometimes act them out alone in his single, sighing, writhing and touching himself. The sort of relief that provided lasted only so long, and even worse were the dreams that tormented him with more vivid images than his conscious imagination out of shame could conjure. It was all driving him slowly mad; that much was apparent. What amazed the devil was that Izuru still could not quite see it for what it was.

No one else noticed this particular change that had come over Okazaki, either, let alone the object of his desire. Focalor, on the other hand, recognized it clearly. As the weeks passed, his course was only made clearer, and his mind more solidly set on what he must do.

—

"One might say," Mitani spoke to the class as he paced the front of the room, a worn and well-loved copy of the novel in his hand. He had departed from his usual lectures to speak about it, as everyone was expected to have read it through at this point in the term. Izuru had finished it long ago, as soon as he had been able. It was his appreciation for his professor that had driven him—driven him to see why it was Mitani appreciated the book so. And Fujisawa, who had grinned knowingly that first day—it was old news to him as well. He slouched in his chair where Izuru sat at attention, but he was no less rapt at all their teacher had to say.

"One might say," Mitani said, "that this is a book first and foremost about knowledge. It is set in a monastery, a place of learning in medieval Europe, specifically one with a huge library designed as a labyrinth, which requires substantial knowledge of scripture and geography to navigate. Our protagonists, Adso and William of Baskerville, are concerned with the search for knowledge: knowledge of the monastery and other characters, namely as they relate to the mystery at hand. But the quest for knowledge is also what leads so many to their deaths: Adelmo, Venantius, Berengar . . . everyone who goes after this book no one seems to be able to find.

"And then there are those who are concerned with the truth, like Jorge and the inquisitors. But what is truth? Can any one person have all the answers to everything? And how can one really say he is trying to get at the truth when that same person twists everything to fit the convictions he already holds, regardless of whether they are . . ." He chuckled. "True?

"So the next question is, is knowledge dangerous? Or rather, for whom, or by whom, does it become so? Obviously, one could say it became dangerous for those who died searching for it. But . . ." He glanced in Izuru's direction briefly. "Was it the thirst to know that killed them? Regardless of what physically did them in, I mean. Isn't it true that for those who _control_ knowledge, those who _have_ power, that these same forces can be dangerous in the hands of those beneath them? There is this idea, obviously shared not just among the men in power, but also those who fear that to actually think—to use our minds logically—indeed, to have an appreciation for something as human as humor is to encroach on the realm of the Devil.

"So, what is it that makes this book controversial?" he said now to the other side of the classroom, holding the book aloft in a manner not unlike that of a preacher. "I'm not talking about what Adelmo and Berengar were up to, either," he clarified to some awkward laughter. "These themes apply to our lives, whether we live now or five hundred years ago—or five hundred years in the future, for that matter. The question of whether information should be free or restricted, and by how much. Not to mention its portrayal of the Church's often ugly past, particularly in its treatment of heretics which we Japanese Christians can relate to as a shameful part of our own history.

"And as for the heretics. . . . What do you make of them? Are they sinners, or just searching for the truth like any of us? Or both? So many of the things we take for granted as truths now were considered controversy then—not just in Europe's middle ages but since the founding of Christianity. The concept that Christ was poor, for example. We accept it today as tradition, but for the leaders of the Church in the thirteenth, fourteenth century nothing could be more dangerous than to question their moral and spiritual integrity by saying that he was. What these heretics were saying by upholding Christ's poverty, essentially, was that the Church was not only not imitating Christ, but going against the very lifestyle he preached! Imagine! It was their audacity to make _those kinds of claims_ that got them killed, more often than not, because there were many—or at least a few who had great power, anyway—who thought that kind of preaching had to be silenced at any costs.

"Like this issue of whether Christ laughed. I know, you're probably thinking, where's the issue? But what you have to understand is that to men like Jorge, laughter was a bestial emotion; and if it was bestial for ordinary men, how much more offensive was it to claim that the son of God, brought into this world without original sin, would have loved a good joke, let alone used one to get his message across. So you had texts like the _Coena Cypriani_ mentioned in the story that were banned as sacrilegious although they were said to reveal secret moral lessons under the 'veil of mirth,' albeit more often than not in an obscene fashion.

"So this is the question I pose to you, even though it's just as much a matter of philosophy as history: If there are no absolutes to measure by, how are we to determine what is moral behavior? We can't abolish 'morality' completely, and let everyone decide for himself what is the truth and what is deception. Or do you think we can? Yes?"

One of the boys had raised his hand, and now seemed surprised to actually be called upon. He said uncertainly, "Well . . . yeah. I mean, within reason, of course—"

"But then how do you determine reason?" said one from the back corner of the room. Those around him laughed, but it was the nervous laugh of those who did not know the answer themselves. "Obviously you have to have _some_ references," said the first boy in response.

Mitani chuckled. "I think what you have there is the great paradox."

Izuru smiled. Though he only listened, he felt like he were the novice Adso listening to one of William of Baskerville's lectures: Ultimately few would understand, including himself at first, but he could not shake the feeling that the truths hidden in the lecture were meant primarily for him. For he found in himself a certain nostalgia for the atmosphere of the fourteenth century as he sat there, when one could still be tortured and burned for having an outlandish idea. He envied the steadfastness of the heretics turned martyrs, their willingness to die for an idea. It was so unlike that modern sentiment expressed by Endo Shusaku and taken up by their professor that it was easier to apostatize, if only in words, and live with the weight of guilt than see one's beloveds suffer, let alone suffer bodily harm oneself. Better to chew off your own leg, in other words, and live lame another day than die in the trap.

Though Izuru could not imagine giving up his life for love of God, as the triumph and subsequent complacency of Christianity in the late-twentieth century would not allow him to, he could see himself giving it up, if for no other reason than to die for a conviction. Or in spite of one. It didn't matter. It was not that he lacked a sense of self-preservation; in fact, one could say that it was strong in him. But it was that sort of drive, after all, that was at the heart of true patriotism and true faithfulness which led one to romanticize death as the ultimate act of honor.

Fujisawa, whose passion for the novel seemed to match his own, was not so unlike him, although one might have compared him rather to the inquisitor than the martyr, if for no other reason than the apparent joy he took hearing of others' suffering. But couldn't it be said that they were oppressed equally under Father Robert and the Ministry of Education's high and blind ideals about the morality of Saint Michel's students? Adelmo and Berengar, they had sought knowledge of a different kind, not just that which could be found in a book. The conviction that there was some kernel of divine purity at the heart of sexual pleasure got Fra Dolcino burned at the stake, and that was sex with women. How much more forbidden, more heretical—and more allowed—had been the secret goings on in the young monks' dormitories as they sought the truth in each other's bodies. How much more Izuru glorified their deaths in his mind, how innocent and genuine they became for him, thinking that in any other time he would only hope to imitate them. How admirable it was for death to mean something, if only to the dying.

Another boy spoke up and said, "If we're Christians, why don't we just go by what the Bible tells us?"

"And whose interpretation do you propose we go by?"

That was Fujisawa, who had been suspiciously quiet throughout the entire class period. Surprised, perhaps by the clarity his voice seemed to have in that one sentence, Mitani said, "Fujisawa brings up an excellent point. The Bible has been used to justify a number of radically different, even contradictory viewpoints over the years. Zwingli and Luther both claimed it as their only source, and yet they couldn't reach a compromise over its interpretation."

"Which is not necessarily a bad thing," said Fujisawa, sitting up with an air worthy of the student body vice-president. "All things considered, I think a deconstructionist attitude is the lesser of two evils. In fact, I would go a step further: rule by shame. It's the best way to keep people in line. And, of course, knowledge leads to shame."

A few of the students snorted and rolled their eyes. It sounded like something Father Robert would say.

"I'm serious," Fujisawa told them. A cocky grin spread across his lips. "Case in point, the garden of Eden. What is original sin but man's punishment for choosing reason over irrational animal instinct? And why else do you think they call sex 'carnal_ knowledge_'?"

"Er, that's an interesting argument," Mitani said, but the excitement he had exhibited over the beginning of the discussion quickly dwindled into what seemed a defensive tone of voice. "But we seem to be drifting off the topic and running out of time, and I wanted to discuss the role of the Minorites a bit before we stop for today. . . ."

—

That night seemed unseasonably warm in the dormitories. The waves were high and could be clearly heard crashing against the rocks and concrete walls from the open window, but there was only a faint breeze moving through. Izuru longed for it to come in and cool the fire that burned inside him, but it remained merely heard and out of reach, much to his frustration. The "noontime devil" moved around even stronger at night. Now when Izuru closed his eyes he saw only Mitani, and remembered how his professor had often smiled at him timidly, and how he had breathed and held himself when they stood close to one another as Izuru asked him a question after class the day before. And how he had smelled. The sound of the crashing waves seemed to call Izuru's name, and in his mind it was Mitani whispering in his ear, breathing against his neck. . . .

Izuru was unable to concentrate on anything else. He abandoned his studies and lay back on his bed, not bothering to turn down the sheets. With the change of position, he could not ignore his arousal any longer if he wanted to. He bit his lip and shifted his hips as his erection strained the crotch of his school pants, and the friction made his head swim.

In the dark he had fewer reservations about admitting what he tried to deny to himself in the day: He wanted Mitani. He wanted him so much he felt he would explode from the pressure. Eyes shut to better lose himself in the world of his thoughts, Izuru slid his hand under the hem of his shirt, caressing his stomach, imagining it was Mitani touching him. Absently, he undid the buttons of the shirt, bared himself to the heavy night air. His legs parted to relieve the pressure building between them, but he only wound up wondering instead how it would feel to have Mitani between his thighs, inside him, and the strain in his groin grew almost painful with anticipation at that thought. He moaned quietly, and the sea continued to call him.

_I . . . zu . . . ru . . . i . . . zu . . . ru . . . _

. . . went the cycle of ebb, flow, and crash. He paid it no more heed than anything else in his fantasy. His fingertips brushed over a nipple. "Sensei," he whispered in answer, turning into the pillow. Kissing the imaginary lips of his professor, he heard Mitani's breathing echoed in his own, quickening next to his skin. He undid the button of his fly, gasping at the slight, sudden release, and touched himself beneath the stiff material of his uniform trousers. His hips began to move in slow circles.

It was only in the back of his mind that Izuru knew he was not alone.

He was too engrossed in his fantasy to see the dark and supple body, thick as a tree trunk, that slid itself into his room through the open window. It made hardly a sound as it moved toward him—or rather, the sound so perfectly matched the hush of the sea and the wind that it seemed like no sound at all. It wove through the shadows toward the foot of the bed; and as it slowly made its way up the length of Izuru's body, hovering above him, he writhed and arched toward it in mindless pleasure. The creature took amusement in this. In the boy's vulnerable state, he could not be bothered to tell the difference between a danger and his imaginary lover. Which merely meant that, so far, Focalor had been right.

The creature let out a hiss of laughter like the clatter of pebbles in the tide, and Izuru started. "Who's there?" he asked, but even then the alarm in his voice was clouded by a stubborn lust. Focalor moved back a little ways into the shadow.

After a tense pause, he breathed the boy's name again. "_I-zu-ru. . . ._" For a moment he doubted his old skills, but he caught the rise of Izuru's Adam's apple as he swallowed and was convinced otherwise.

"Who are you?" Izuru whispered. His eyes were closing again, he was falling back into his waking dream, and Focalor took the opportunity to move closer for a better look at the body that would soon be his. Skin thin and wrinkled like parchment brushed against Izuru's thighs and his bare chest as he moved, causing Izuru to moan.

With another low chuckle, Focalor answered him: "_You know who I am._"

The room's invader was a dim shape, already difficult to make out, like the elusive figure of a monster in dreams, always barely escaping the eye, and in the dark it was even less distinct. Nonetheless, what hovered above Izuru on its vestigial limbs was a long and serpentine creature, perhaps nine meters in length, that moved in rippling coils. Like a wave slowly moving to shore and melting into the one behind it, the gentle undulation of its body had a seductive, feminine quality despite its grotesque appearance. The hide was a muddy black and covered by a mail shirt of long tough scales, which shone like a cloak of electrum where the faint light hit it with its own oils, or perhaps the accumulation of millennia-long immersion in the silty ocean depths and the muck of the human world that polluted them. Sprouting from behind its gills and from bony protuberances above each set of spindly arms, were great wings or fins, though their appearance was more like sails, their masts twisted and knotted like maple wood. The skin stretched between those bones, thick and embroidered with myriad wrinkled black veins, was like vellum or a silken fabric in the way it billowed around the body with each breath and flex.

Its head was bald except for a scraggly beard like seaweed or burnt flesh that peels away from the body hanging from the lower jaw, and was skeletal in its texture and appearance like the skull of some prehistoric fish, bursting with a brain that had had a hundred millennia to evolve within its primitive constraints. The jaw was hinged far back in the head, able to detach itself to swallow larger prey like a python's, but fixed in a permanent death grin as it was not covered by the unnecessary flesh of cheek or lips. Stiletto-like teeth, the longest as long as a human radius, jutted from either side of this creature's mouth in the manner of a viperfish, curving out and up towards the eyes, or down over the chin.

But most striking of all for Focalor's victim were its eyes. Set low and in the front of the head, they were massive and bulged out of their sockets, each swiveling of its own accord. Though fiery in color, they glowed an almost diseased white with an internal, phosphorescent light. And the tiny slits of pupils, that focused so keenly on their target, never breaking eye contact, made those eyes seem even more blind, though hardly lifeless. The lids, what little the creature had of them, were so thin one could see the pupil rolling underneath with each leisurely blink.

And yet Izuru was not frightened—at least not in the sense that men are usually frightened. He was not disgusted, nor did he fear for his life. It was not the goal of the devil to turn away his victims but to bring them closer, to tempt them, to gain their trust—indeed to supplicate himself. In order to be successful, the boy had to believe he would not be hurt and, in fact, that the greater benefit would be his.

But he must not ask for that guarantee or else the freedom to do what the devil had in mind would not be granted. A difficult task to accomplish while possessing of such an unnatural and grotesque vessel, but Focalor was not worried. The tools of the devil were many and multifaceted, a maze of temptation and logical contradiction without beginning or end. His body's breathing was as regular and gentle as the waves, and the low rumbling from the back of his throat which repeated Izuru's name like a mantra rocked the boy like his dream-lover's arms. It was not a putrid odor that he breathed, but something not meant for this world. Something like lilacs or apricot blossoms mingled with the astringent scent of brine and kelp—the smell of saints to confuse that already blurry line between purity and corruption.

Already enthralled by his own lust, Izuru could only focus on the eyes of that angel—albeit one fallen—so radiant, so beautiful it was terrifying, so intangible he wanted nothing more than to possess its magnificence. And with that sweet voice that was as calming as ripples on a pond, he would have done almost anything the creature asked.

_"You know me,"_ the devil told him. _"It was you who summoned me to be your servant, though perhaps you were not aware of it. Yet I heard you,"_ he assured the boy gently, his words slow like a chant, like a noh actor lulling his audience into a trance, _"because we are the same, you and I. We both long for something that is beyond our reach—something we have been told we are not allowed to have, and that is tearing us up at the seams because of it."_

Izuru gasped when he heard that, and Focalor gave a low laugh of satisfaction.

_"You wonder how I knew? I know everything—about your secret, your sin, your desire. Your body speaks of it loudly, crying out with every fiber of your being, filling my ears with its hunger. I have seen as though through your own eyes how you look after that man . . . Mitani."_

Mitani. That was a name Izuru recognized—a face he longed to have look only on him, that always retreated from him like the water around Tantalus when he reached out for it.

_"He does not return your feelings, does he? No. . . . But how could he? He does not realize what is in his own heart. Not yet. He is too busy looking at his feet on the ground. But I could make him look up, Izuru. Yes, look up and see_ you_. For a pittance, I could—indeed, I would give you anything your heart desired. I would make you king of the world if you wished it, and you must believe, it would take no large effort on my part. Fame, wealth, adoration. . . . You could be set up for life. Even the slightest whim would be my pleasure. All you need do is ask and you shall receive. Is that not what the Gospels tell you to do? Well, I can make more than empty promises. I can make your dreams reality."_

The devil felt for his mind, the train of his thoughts, searching for some clue he was on the right track. The creature's thick tongue moved in its maw like a bird in a cage, behind the sinister smile, tasting the air and the scent rising off of his victim. It told him what he already suspected, that there was no change in the direction of the boy's thoughts.

_"But, no. That is not enough for you. You do not want those things, those responsibilities. You have everything you could possibly want already, except. . . ."_ Yes, he felt it clearly now as he absorbed the boys emotions into his own self, into the nuclei of his cells, more clearly than he had that day in the courtyard. _"Yes, everything except him._

_"I beg of you, Izuru, I prostrate myself at your feet,"_ the devil said, _"I am your servant, to do with as you wish. But I require a small favor in return. It would hardly be fair if only one of us benefited by my grace, would it not? I can only give so much, Izuru, for I have suffered so much. I have been wronged as you have been wronged, denied as you have been denied. And my soul has burned in torment over it. This shell of a body, it grows old. I feel the weight of the years, countless centuries. Millennia. . . . Can you imagine this pain of yours lasting millennia, Izuru? It wastes this body away, just as the world wastes away, Izuru, into oblivion in corruption and suffering and blasphemous nonsense, and I am sickened by it."_

Izuru was sickened by it. The endless, meaningless parable of life at Saint Michel without Mitani's constant presence, without any sign the admiration that Izuru so devoutly gave was returned—

_"I am tired of being sickened by it. And who will help us to break free from our suffering, Izuru? Where is the god they make you worship in this temple of greed and vanity when you need him most? Why, he has abandoned you—abandoned you because what you seek to enter is a world that he forbade, Izuru, just as he forbade me that world I once called my home, my empire. Do you not see what a cruel god he is, Izuru?"_

Izuru did see. He had been living under the yoke of a faith he never chose for himself long enough, and for nothing—

_"He would deny you Mitani's embrace, his touch, his adoration—all these things you desire even more than existence itself. And for what? It is called an unnatural love, because its realization can come to nothing. It is called blasphemy to say that such a love can be purer than any base one that leads to reproduction, to the propagation of filth, to animal rutting, though somehow that base one is held in the highest honor, as a sacrament. _

_"See the hypocrisy of men's religion, Izuru!"_ the devil hissed, the conviction in his words echoing off the dormitory ceiling and ringing in Izuru's ears. _"See the hypocrisy of your almighty god! Decry this folly once and for all, embrace what you know in your heart to be right and good, and I guarantee you, your Mitani will come around to that sense as well. How could he not have even once entertained the thought of following the glorious path of youth, being only a lowly man of sin after all?"_

His body was within reach. Sensing that, Focalor's hunger grew. The beast's tongue twisted eagerly inside the cage of its maw, slapping the saliva that had begun to pool around it. The boy was so close to accepting him, his scent heady in the creature's nostrils, his soul just beyond his grasp.

_"Let us help each other,"_ Focalor said. _"Say you wish to close this deal and your will shall be done. Mitani will be yours and yours alone. All I ask in return is that you do not forget your servant, and let him use this mortal body when you have passed, though far away that day may be. What harm could there be in merely recycling this mortal vessel, when you no longer have use of it? Surely you must see what a small, insignificant price it is to pay for how much you will gain. What say you?" _

There could only be one answer, but he had to hear it. For his own sake, and for the bargain to be binding, he needed to hear the words. _"Tell me what you want, Izuru."_

"I want him . . ." God, but he wanted Mitani, till he thought his heart would burst from wanting.

But it wasn't enough. Stubborn child. _"Then say you accept my terms! Say the words and I will appease your hunger. I will make this agony go away!"_

"Yes . . . do it, please . . ." Izuru moaned beneath him. He twisted in impatience, clawing at the pillow beneath his head.

_"'Please' what? If you want what I am offering you, boy, then say that you accept!"_

"I accept, I accept!" The words tore themselves from Izuru's throat. "Just please . . . now. . . ."

Satisfied, Focalor wasted no more time. It did not matter to him whether the boy knew what he was saying, or that he was only prompted by the promise of seeing his desire fulfilled. The contract had been signed; it needed only ratification.

The creature's tongue shot between the teeth that were the bars of its prison, forcing its way through the boy's parted lips. Izuru gasped at the intrusion. At first, still lost in his lust, the hardness of the muscle, the life that throbbed within it, and the first briny taste that hit his tongue nearly drove him to the climax that had eluded him painfully so far.

In an instant, however, every trace of desire within him was dashed as the thing discharged in him. Every desire, that was, but his body's to reject the intrusion. He gagged as something warm and viscous filled the back of his throat. He tasted bile and blood that were not his own, and something fouler than the smell of sewage, something that slithered down his windpipe like slimy bits of flesh, alive with a purpose of their own. He wanted to vomit. He longed desperately to breathe, but the tongue pushed farther in, blocking his airflow with its foul ichor. It pumped its contents into him without cessation, the filth filling Izuru's esophagus, filling his lungs. The sharp pain deep in his chest and the dreaded realization that he was falling from that proverbial cliff toward death were the last things Izuru knew before passing into unconsciousness. It could have come sooner, but at least he would remember less of that horrifying pain when he woke than he would a hazy dream.

At last he went still, and silence filled the room. It was a moment more before the creature finished its duty. Hunched tense over the boy's body, there was something of the detached stare of childbirth in its shadowy silhouette. When the tongue retracted, the angelic light faded from the bulging eyes. Only a dumb, empty look remained in its hideous features—no hint of sentience let alone any mind at all showed in its skeletal grin. If any consciousness remained it was a rudimentary, instinctual one hardwired into the body, into the spinal chord. It was only that that made the creature turn once again to the window, and drag its body through it toward the ocean and the chilly night air, an empty husk.

—

Izuru did not attend class the next day.

No one made a fuss about it for much of the morning—after all, it was not unusual for students to skip lectures due to illness or studying for exams, or simply for the hell of it. However, for Izuru, who had never missed a day since the start of the term, this was unusual. At least Mitani thought so.

"Where's Okazaki?" he asked the class when he failed to see the boy at the beginning of lecture.

Some of the students in the front row shrugged. "I haven't seen him all day. He never came in."

"Maybe he got sick."

"If he was feeling ill," Mitani said aloud to himself, "he would have gone to the infirmary—"

Fujisawa's snort startled him. "Yeah, right. Okazaki's never sick." Not so hidden behind his careless smile lay his disgust for his classmate, who not only seemed able to get away with anything, but now was actually procuring a professor's sympathy in doing so. Why such a fuss? As always, he thought, it couldn't be anything serious.

But Mitani appeared to think it was. "Fujisawa," he said, "will you come with me, please?"

The other started. "What? Why?"

"Since you know Okazaki so well," Mitani said, much to his chagrin, "I think you should come with me to make sure nothing has happened to him."

"You've got to be kidding me," Fujisawa muttered under his breath, but he could hear the worry held in close check in his professor's voice and knew he was serious. Grudgingly, he rose from his seat, and Mitani told the class, "Continue to read from the book while I'm gone. Tanaka will be in charge until I return." The bespectacled boy sitting next to Fujisawa nodded. To Fujisawa, even he looked annoyed by their professor's preferential treatment.

They checked with the infirmary first, but Izuru was never there, so Fujisawa took Mitani to the dorms. To say that it was awkward bringing his professor this close to his private life, and to his rival's, would be an understatement. That, compounded by his outrage over the special treatment Izuru received, served to only darken his mood. He turned away when his teacher knocked and, getting no answer, opened the door.

Mitani put his hand over his mouth. "Oh God—"

Izuru lay on the floor, curled on his side and unconscious, so that at first glance he seemed as still as a corpse. Mitani was beside him the next, turning him over and feeling for a pulse. As he did so, Izuru groaned in his arms.

"What time is it?" he mumbled. "I'm going to be late for Sensei's class. . . ."

He tried to get up, looking right past Mitani, and Mitani could tell he was still out of it. He shook the boy gently. "It's okay, Okazaki. That doesn't matter right now."

Slowly Izuru's gaze focused on his face. "Sensei?"

"That's right. Are you all right?"

Izuru nodded and sat up.

But no sooner had he done so than he abruptly pushed himself away from Mitani, turned, and vomited. At least, he tried to. The muscles in his stomach spasmed violently under Mitani's hands as he dry heaved, and that was when Mitani noticed the boy was burning up. His skin felt clammy. His trousers was undone and what few buttons on his shirt he had managed were in the wrong holes. He must have collapsed while getting ready to leave for class, Mitani thought. The window was wide open and the curtains billowed in the cold breeze. No wonder Izuru had a fever. It had probably been open all night.

"Fujisawa," Mitani said to the boy in the doorway, "call the nurse."

Fujisawa was livid. Out of all the stunts to pull, making himself ill for attention was by far the lowest. "Come on, you don't believe he's— He's faking it, Sensei!"

To prove him wrong, Izuru doubled over again, this time with a sob of pain. "Just do it!" Mitani said as he held onto him. Glancing up, he saw Fujisawa pale as he stared at Izuru, looking like he was going to be sick himself. "Jesus Christ—" he gasped and hurried from the room.

When Mitani turned back, he saw for himself what had startled Fujisawa. Something like a ragged piece of flesh was lying on the floor where Izuru had spit it out, covered in a thick black bile the consistency of molasses that shone sickly in the light from the window. The way sea cucumbers deflate out of water, that was how it seemed to lie there. In the split second that Mitani was able to study it, he could have sworn it moved by itself, palpitated, like a thing suffering a slow death.

But he had no time to dwell on it as Izuru fainted. In the short time before Mitani glanced back toward the thing, it had disappeared, like water evaporating from a hot stone.

—

While he waited for the school nurse to arrive, Mitani carried Izuru to the bed. He felt terribly light to Mitani, who wasn't sure if it was his illness that made him seem so. But even in his pallor Izuru was beautiful.

Beautiful. That wasn't a word Mitani had ever expected to use to describe one of his students, but it was what came to mind now as he watched Izuru sleep.

Beautiful in the perfect, aesthetic proportions of his face and figure—beautiful in the sense that the Madonna is beautiful. There was something divine, Mitani thought, in the downward curve of Izuru's mouth, or the way his long eyelashes brushed his skin, and the serene line of his eyebrows gave him the expression of a saint giving blessings. The slight sheen of sweat on his brow matched this image, and it was with a tender reverence that Mitani brushed the damp hair out of his eyes. He felt like a worshiper, unworthy of the sacred ground on which he tread and holding his breath in the anticipation that any moment he would be noticed. He let his gaze travel down Izuru's body, admiring the curve of his throat, the softness of his torso glimpsed under the hastily buttoned shirt that lingered despite the athletic, masculine lines that had developed.

Of course, Mitani reminded himself, he's seventeen. Maybe it didn't feel like so long since he had been that age himself, though it was long enough to regret what he had—or hadn't—been then. He felt a pang of jealousy looking at Izuru in this new light, but with it a pang of something else that was at the same time much more pleasant and painful. He denied that it was physical attraction, but he couldn't deny his curiosity, which he passed off as being in a scientific vein. Just as some are drawn to machines for the beautiful symbiosis of their various working parts, so could he appreciate the different features, lovely in their own right, that made up this one perfect body. In his mind, there was a hierarchy of temptation in which some kinds of curiosity were purer than others. And it was, after all, mere curiosity that drew his eyes down to Izuru's navel, which rose with each steady breath between the tails of his shirt, and toward his narrow hips, and the lines that disappeared under the waistband of his slacks. . . .

If it was mere curiosity, then why did he suddenly feel like he had caught Izuru's fever?

"Sensei?"

Mitani started. He looked up to see Izuru watching him with half-open eyes. There was a bold intimacy in them Mitani had never received from the boy before. He had to remind himself it was a rather intimate thing he had witnessed.

But how long had Izuru been watching him? The heat rose to Mitani's cheeks, and he felt like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, averting his eyes as Izuru began to fix his appearance.

"Better. Thank you." Izuru managed a small smile. "I'm sorry you had to see that just now. It must have alarmed you."

"Yes. As a matter of fact it did."

"Well, it's nothing to worry about," Izuru said nonchalantly. "I guess I must have eaten something that disagreed with me."

That did nothing to reassure Mitani. _Eaten something. . . ._ He thought of that black thing Izuru had spit up. Izuru must not have seen it; he acted like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Maybe he had been too out of it to notice.

But though he was careful to give no outward indication, Izuru was concerned, if not so much for his health as for his sanity. He knew there was something wrong when he actually wanted to pass out again. Strange and horrible images flooded his mind even now in the light, with his eyes wide open: images of a winged, serpentine creature with a death's-head, birdcage grin and eyes like mirrors he could see himself reflected in. But along with a trace, incongruous, and somewhat embarrassing memory of physical ecstasy, that was all it was: a trace. An image. Why it bothered him so he could not say. It was obviously only a very strange dream.

However, rather than ease his mind, he suspected that if he confided in Mitani what had happened—what he remembered happening—he would only feel worse. It felt like something had an actual hold on his tongue when he tried. So it was with some effort that he forced a smile for his teacher. Though his whole body was exhausted, he felt at the same time physically stronger than any time he could remember. Mentally, however, he did not feel better at all.

And somehow—though it seemed against his will—even that feeling was passing quickly like his upset stomach.

"I had Fujisawa call the nurse," Mitani said. "He should be here any minute—"

"Fujisawa was here?" Izuru grimaced. If there was one embarrassment he could have done without. . . .

"He told me you never got sick. I was afraid something terrible might have happened to you."

"Sensei. . . ." Touched by his professor's concern and ashamed he could not voice his own, Izuru averted his eyes. "That was kind of you," he said after a moment, "but I'm sorry to cause you so much trouble. I'm . . . I'm sorry I missed class."

"Please, Okazaki, don't apologize for something you couldn't control. Anyway, you have nothing to worry about because I canceled my lecture this morning."

The elation Izuru had felt just hearing his teacher say his name so tenderly suddenly gave way to an irrational fear. His heartbeat quickened. "You canceled because of me? Why?"

The turnaround startled Mitani. Shouldn't Izuru have been relieved?

A knock on the door kept him from having to reply. The school nurse entered with an awkward, disarming smile, and Mitani related to him what happened and how he had found Izuru.

Izuru already had the diagnosis and cure down for him. "It's a stomach flu. I ate something that disagreed with me, is all. I'll sleep it off."

"You're probably right," the nurse said. "Still, I'll have to take a look at you to make sure. Then I can give you something to take for—"

"No!" Izuru interjected. Even he was surprised by the deep-seated anxiety in his voice; he did not know where that came from. Calming himself, he amended: "I don't want any medicine. I've already got it out of my system. I'll just take it easy tonight and it'll go away in a day by itself. It always does."

He looked at Mitani, and Mitani would have been able to say with certainty this time that something had changed in his gaze. Holding it, Izuru said, with a fondness that sent a shiver down his professor's spine, "Anyway, I already feel better now that Sensei is here."

Mitani waited outside in the hall while the nurse conducted his examination. The man was out in a short while, greeting Mitani with a shrug. "Okazaki will be fine," he said. "It doesn't appear to be anything serious. He isn't even running a temperature. It was probably just a mild case of dehydration or food poisoning, like he said."

"Food poisoning." Mitani nodded to himself. His thoughts drifted to the thing Izuru had spit up, which had worried him so much with its macabre appearance, but even his memory of it was growing more and more vague by the minute. If he told the nurse what he had seen, with no hard evidence to prove his story, the man might think he was delusional. "But the window was open all night," he said quietly instead. "He was burning up—"

"The stress it puts on the body often makes it seem like a person is running a fever," said the nurse. "He doesn't have pneumonia, if that's what you're suggesting."

"Thank you," was all Mitani could say. So, he had nothing to worry about, he told himself. But that was easier said than believed.

—

As he had predicted, Izuru was back to normal by dinner that night. If anything, he felt even stronger than before. His cheerful mood bordered on out-of-character, and the unusual bounce in his step did little to assuage the speculation that circulated around his brief and mysterious bout with illness.

"Stay away from me!" Fujisawa jumped to his feet when Izuru approached his table, covering his mouth and nose; and for a moment Izuru thought his classmate was accusing him of committing some grave sin. "You have some nerve to show up here," Fujisawa said, indicating the dining hall with his eyes, "after what happened. But you're not giving me your sickness."

At those words, immediately the first-years who sat around him copied his gesture.

"It isn't contagious," Izuru said. "Anyway, I'm better now."

"After one day—no, not even that—a couple hours?" His classmate's voice was muffled behind his hand. "I don't believe it. You shouldn't even be able to leave your room. Unless, of course, you were faking in all along." A sinister grin appeared in his eyes.

"I wasn't faking. You were there—"

"Yeah," Fujisawa lowered his voice, "I was there. I saw that . . . _thing_ you hacked up. . . ."

"Your sympathy is touching, Fujisawa."

"Why would I sympathize with you, Okazaki? This is self-preservation, plain and simple; you know that. I don't want to catch anything like that from you is all . . . not even if it is for Sensei's attention."

The last words had been spoken low enough for only the two of them to hear, but Izuru felt himself rise to anger nonetheless. He tried not to show it in front of the other students. Even though his assumption was incorrect, still there was no way Fujisawa could have known. . . .

The vice-president snickered behind his makeshift mask. "What, Izuru? Speechless? I must have hit a nerve."

"You don't know anything about it," Izuru said.

"Hm." In his characteristic way, Fujisawa's amusement turned instantly to a frown as he looked down his nose at his classmate. "I said, get away!" he barked, pointing his other hand away from him and the first-year table. It seemed to Izuru like he believed himself to be exorcising a malevolent spirit. For some reason, the thought gave him an inexplicable thrill in the pit of his stomach.

Perhaps it was only a coincidence—for his gaze remained fixed on Izuru—that Fujisawa's finger was pointing directly at Mitani.

The young teacher seemed a bit surprised when Izuru approached him. Or maybe it was just that he would do so in a place so crowded with other students. He said amiably enough, "How are you feeling, Okazaki? Your appetite's returning?"

"Yes, thanks to you," said Izuru. There was a confidence in his smile that had been hiding that day in the square.

Mitani was glad to see it. He took it as a sign of Izuru's returning health, and did not give it a second thought. "I'm glad to hear it. If there's anything else you ever need, you shouldn't hesitate to say so."

So brief was the mischievous flash in Izuru's eyes that the other missed it.

"If that's the case," he said, "maybe I can see you about some advice for preparing for college tomorrow."

"No need," said Mitani. He gestured to his half-eaten dinner, adding, "I'm finished here, so I could see you in my office now, if you've already eaten."

Izuru hadn't, but he found he did not have much of an appetite. At least not for food.

The teachers' room was abandoned at that time of day, so it made for an ideal corner in which the two of them could sit and talk in total privacy. Outside, the dark of a late-autumn afternoon was an impenetrable cold that practically invited the intimacy of this uninhabited room. Mitani pulled some thick books from the shelves that lined the side of the room, and Izuru pulled up a chair. Sitting in such close proximity, hunched over the small pool of lamplight on the desk, he listened to Mitani's suggestions only half-heartedly. He was paying close attention, but not to those.

Instead Izuru watched the shape of Mitani's lips as he spoke, his eyes trained on the book in front of him. Every now and then their knees would touch one another. When Mitani was conscious of it, he would withdraw his leg, until he forgot his vigilance and they touched again. How queer the sensation felt, and heavy with meaning, the touch of that man's warm skin and twitching muscles leaning against Izuru's through a barrier of mere cloth. Like how an invisible stray hair can tickle the follicles of the arm as though it were crawling with phantom spiders. How hard and uncomfortable and real was the cheap metal armrest that dug into his thigh in comparison, and the upholstered seat with too little stuffing. With calculated patience, Izuru soaked these feelings in. He leaned in more, feigning sudden interest in the page Mitani had turned to, and was rewarded with a shy chuckle, a subtle cock of the head in the other direction. Izuru smiled. Only a day ago, he might have balked at this evidence that he made his teacher uncomfortable. But the tension that existed between them there, as though contained by that little pool of light, made Izuru's pulse race, and he knew he was not the only one aware of it.

And for the rest of the week, one might have seen out of the corner of his eye—down on the beach, if he braved the weather—the white carcass of a giant fish undulating against the rocks with the flow of the tide, its body bloated and flesh ragged from deterioration and the scavenging of crabs and flies, its lidless eye bursting from its socket and covered by a thick, white film. If it were anything other than a glimpse, one might have thought it was an impossible fish, something that may have existed once but should not have in this geological era, except perhaps in the darkest depths. One more superstitious, one who believed in an actual Hell, might have even thought it cause for alarm.

No one saw it but for a glimpse, however, but Focalor. And Izuru watched the gulls' strange, disoriented behavior for the second time in such a short period, wondering what had provoked the spike of spiteful satisfaction that arose suddenly within him.

—

It was dark in the small room. Hands caressed his face, hands that reached out of the darkness as though bodiless.

But there was a body pressed against him; slowly he deciphered the warmth of another's naked skin, though the face of the owner remained beyond his field of vision. He tried to find it, but every time he turned to focus on its features, the darkness swallowed it up, like a reflection in warped glass. The other knew his frustration and laughed—a rich laugh that was at once condescending and playful and desirous, and without any doubt the laugh of a young man.

His heart leaped at the revelation. These hands, this body that touched him was a thing forbidden by his upbringing and his higher sensibilities, something worthy of rebuke and disgust; and yet he found his own temperature rising at the simple recognition of the muscles of a leg tensing against his; the fingers that brushed shyly against his lips produced the sensation of butterflies in his stomach, and the unmistakable tension of sexual arousal. It defied what he knew in his heart should be, but the truth remained that this profane experience felt no less sacred than that elation he found in mass. . . .

It was impossible to tell which way was up. He was left powerless by his inability to see his elusive seducer, yet the other could lay kisses on his lips and touch the lower regions of his body unbidden. Something about the stranger's manner was familiar to him. Who are you? he longed to ask, but did not dare speak the words. I know I know you, but why must you keep escaping me? He had the vivid knowledge of touching the soft, hot skin of the inside of a thigh and the mouth covering his broke away in a gasp. "Sensei," the stranger whispered against his lips.

Then he knew. It was Izuru. He had one brief glimpse of Izuru's countenance before him before the abrupt end—his eyes downcast and saintly as they had been that afternoon surrounded by a faint sheen of sweat, the pupils dilated beneath his long eyelashes with lust. . . .

Mitani awoke with those images, those feelings fresh and uncompleted in his mind. The sound of the dream Izuru's breath continued to echo in his head, tormenting him with sinful promises so that he couldn't help but play them over in his imagination as he prepared for the day. He felt unclean, but there was no time to shower, and he knew that if he did his arousal would only return two-fold. Just that knowledge shamed him. It was the thought of seeing Izuru in class, of layering the lies of his dream upon that innocent person, that disgusted him the most. He was determined to rid himself of its memory before the first bell.

It was early in the morning and the sun had not yet risen when Mitani went to the chapel. Father Robert looked up immediately from lighting the candles in the alcove in preparation for that morning's mass. Mitani's footsteps carried in the sparsely-furnished, stone-walled building—betraying his guilty conscience, he feared; but that was, after all, why he had come. "Sorry to bother you like this, Father," he said, "but would you hear my confession? It's been two days since the last one, but I felt I should come right away."

He lowered his voice, afraid it too might echo among the images of the saints, and carry his words to Heaven. He preferred to keep them on Earth a while longer. "I need your guidance, Father."

"I can see that. You don't look well, Professor."

"I don't feel well. I have something I need to get off my chest. It feels like I'm being suffocated by it. You're the only person I can talk to about this."

"That is what I'm here for," the priest said, and gestured for Mitani to take a seat in one of the pews. "What is it that has been bothering you so terribly?"

He felt again like he had as a young boy, being swallowed up by the grandness of the church as he confessed his sins to a face that never varied from its stern, unyielding look. Father Robert's face this morning was no different from that hazy memory of a priest from his childhood, and unconsciously Mitani drew himself closer as he sat beneath it. He willed his heart to slow as he gathered the courage to speak what was in it. His hand was shaking for fear of what Father Robert might say. But he was more afraid, he reminded himself, of the consequences should he let his sin go unconfessed.

He lowered his head and let the words come. "I had . . . sinful thoughts, Father. About a student."

"'Sinful' covers a lot of meanings, Professor. Were they of a violent nature?"

"No." Mitani sighed deeply in something like relief. "No, nothing like that, thank God."

"It's not unusual for a teacher to sometimes harbor some resentment toward a student," Father Robert went on without missing a beat. "Sometimes they unconsciously act out some hard feelings carried over from their own youth that something in this generation brings to the surface. Someone reminds them of a rival from long ago. I'm sure everyone here has confessed something like that to me at least once. It's nothing to get worked up over. Pray to God to help you through these struggles, and surely you will be forgiven."

But Mitani shook his head. The priest's blindness frustrated him. It only made it harder to say what he had to. "It isn't that at all, Father. But I fear in the eyes of the Church it may be just as bad as if I had actually struck that person. My thoughts . . . they were sexual in nature."

The silence that followed was so brutal in its totality, Mitani could not bear it.

"Father?" he ventured.

"You had impure thoughts about one of our boys?"

Startled by the hard edge in the priest's tone of voice, the tenuous restraint, Mitani looked up. "Yes," he admitted.

"For how long?"

"It was just early this morning, in a dream. But it was so vivid it left me thinking, maybe I'd had them longer and just hadn't realized it." There had to be some hope found in honesty, in remorse. Though sitting under that hardened, judgmental gaze, like the gaze of a statue of a saint captured in the warped mirror of a childhood memory, made him want to stop, he pressed on, believing it for the best. "I know it was wrong. I feel . . . I feel like I've betrayed my purpose here, and that person, even though I don't know why I had those thoughts. That's why I came to you with repentance in my heart."

"Wrong," said the priest, "is not the half of it. What you speak of is not natural. It is an abomination, an affront against God and all that He has created. You're right to be ashamed. Have we not been taught that men who commit such acts with other men, they 'received in their own persons the due penalty of their error'?"

"Yes. I know what the Bible says of homosexual behavior. But I didn't _do_ anything, Father." Mitani made a small gesture of futility. "I merely ask forgiveness for my thoughts."

"It makes no difference whether it is the mind or the body that sins." The indignant passion of his homilies had begun to slip into the priest's manner, as though what Mitani told him shook his soul more than any sin committed by the students. As though it were he Mitani had trespassed against personally. "Christ said that if a man merely thinks about committing adultery, it is as if he has committed the act for real in his heart."

"Even if it is only a dream?" Mitani tried. "A dream isn't something a person has control over. Is it? Isn't it just something irrational, some random images put together from the events of that day?"

"Which is even worse. Dreams are things that are formed out of our deepest desires. Out of the things we dwell on in our unconscious thoughts."

"I suppose when the angels appeared to the prophets in their dreams, that was genuine," Mitani corrected himself.

"The same could be said of devils."

Mitani groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Father, what am I supposed to do? Please tell me. I feel so lost. I don't know where to begin to find a solution to this problem."

"This isn't something you can just make disappear with a magic word," said the priest. It seemed nothing Mitani said could diminish his disgust, no matter how sincere the young professor's contrition. "You were invited here to act as a moral guide for your students, among other things. They were put in your care, under a great deal of trust. Are you aware of the stain you have put on this institution and all that someone in your position is supposed to stand for? What a disappointment this is? To me?"

"Of course, I am!" Mitani said in a burst of frustration. "That's the worst part of it. Even if no one else is directly affected, I am still dirtied by it. It's like I have blood caked under my nails, and nothing I can do will wash it away. Don't you think I want with all my soul for that feeling to stop?"

Father Robert just shook his head slowly.

"Please, Father." Mitani bowed his head again, pressing his folded hands to his brow. "Can't you see that I'm penitent? I know my thoughts were misguided, but it isn't as though I've killed or robbed anyone."

"You betrayed that person and this institution, as you said."

Father Robert did not need to say anything more. As they both knew, the coldest, innermost circle of Hell was reserved for traitors.

Slowly, Mitani let his shoulders fall. The revulsion and panic of that morning had largely evaporated, leaving in its place a numbness and disparaging unease even heavier. A revelation that even with the absolution of confession, the sin of his dream could not simply be removed like a stain. I could work hard, he thought, to change my heart. If those feelings are truly unnatural and unnecessary, it is possible they could be simply an illusion of the idle brain. The pleasure they conjured was nothing but a sign of decadence. They could be erased. With the proper discipline, they could be erased. Or at very least, replaced. That was something Mitani could settle for. If he only knew the way.

"Please," he said again, unable to raise his voice above a whisper. "There must be something I can do."

—

But one can't always help the way his thoughts drift. Though in the novel, Berengar flogged himself for his sinful deeds and thoughts, still he could not rid himself of them, for they were a kind of addiction.

Mitani would not go so far as to say he had an addiction himself. However, he might admit that he held inside his self a curiosity about Izuru that would not simply go away with prayer or self-denial, or any naive attempt to consciously steer his mind to another course. It was not a pure curiosity, no matter how earnestly he wished it to be. It was for that reason that he felt himself in the constant torment of guilt, like an affliction. In this world of Saint Michel's in which he had been indoctrinated, like that fictional mountain monastery, it seemed the way of women was something forbidden, their bodies held as instruments of the devil that made young men stray from their entrance exam studies. But if that were so, the way of youth, almost revered for its danger in the times of the shogunate, was infinitely more shameful and unnatural. "Those sins that are against nature," St Augustine had written, "like those of the men of Sodom, are in all times and places to be detested and punished. Even if all nations committed such sins, they should all alike be held guilty by God's law which did not make men that they should use each other thus. The friendship which should be between God and us is violated when that nature—whose author he is—is polluted by so perverted a lust."

And yet Mitani could not help asking, as he steadily grew used to the thoughts that pervaded his mind, why if thoughts like his were against nature, if they came to nothing, why then did people have them? No matter how thoroughly the works of theology he had read strove to answer that question, and no matter how solid their logic, still that one doubt nagged constantly at his heart.

Did it bother Fujisawa as well, or was it the thought of sin that only egged him on, like it does so many of the young and disillusioned? While Mitani was reviling his body for its desires, was Fujisawa not praising it and feeding it? Perhaps it is the invincibility of youth that makes one do reckless things in adolescence—not a thought for consequences of the future entering the mind because it is unable to perceive the very idea of a future.

There was nothing sinful about two people coming together to satisfy their needs. Embracing the assistant librarian in the back room, the musky scent of feminine desire as she moved with him mingling with the musty scent of old binding, her arms and legs wrapped around his back awkwardly in their raw and momentary desperation, their only fear was that they might be caught by the head librarian returning early from his break. The first-year who had seemed in awe of the rumors surrounding the vice-president, who held back his cries at the discomfort of Fujisawa inside his inexperienced body, had nothing innocent in his soul to protect, let alone that he wanted to protect.

If he had any second thoughts about what his curiosity had gotten him into, they were not immediate enough to overcome his almost reverent fear of Fujisawa's office; and the young woman, though more than three years his senior, her dark eyes closed in ecstasy behind her dark-framed glasses, cared much less for his office than for the satisfaction of having been loved by a youth of his looks and charm for just a few minutes.

When all was said and done, and the mind reeled in the afterglow of having reached something close to holy for a few transient seconds, what did it matter to him if he lay spent beside a boy or a girl? Either way, he was convinced, there was no salvation for his generation.


	2. Okazaki File, Part B

The winter holiday arrived almost before Izuru knew it. Though the palpable excitement of the other students making plans or tossing about feminine names, and the songs they sang in mass appropriate to the various days of Advent clearly indicated its approach, it still felt as though it had sneaked up on Izuru. It wasn't until Fujisawa mentioned that his father was sending him to Tokyo for the break that he was forced to think about his own plans.

"We're going skiing in the Skidome, and afterward I plan on having steak at the most expensive restaurant I can find. My cousin's coming over from Texas, and she hardly speaks a word of Japanese, but I don't really care 'cause she's stacked out to here. . . ." When he got no response, he leaned over, a nosy look on his face, exposing the pretextual nature that information had carried all along. "What are you doing for the holiday?"

Izuru had hardly allowed it to cross his mind, as doing so would do nothing to cheer him up like it did the other students; and when he did remember the bland week and a half that always lay before him this time of year, it was not without some amount of jealousy for his classmate.

"Just going home." He shrugged. There was really nothing more to say than that.

"Sorry to hear that." Fujisawa chuckled lightly, making it clear he was really quite pleased. He had hard candy in his mouth, and the way he rolled it about on his tongue, making it click against his teeth, seemed a mocking gesture. "I'm glad I'm not you, Okazaki," he purred, "or I think I might cut my stomach just to add some color to my life."

Saint Michel's winter holiday differed from the schedules of the local public high schools. As it was a Christian institution, they went on break several days before other schools so that students would be able to celebrate Christmas with their family or friends. But as it approached, Izuru anticipated it with as much excitement as every year, which was far below the level one might consider normal and healthy for a boy his age. He had long felt distanced from his family, into whose priorities he never figured particularly highly; and since they had enrolled him in Saint Michel, the distance had only grown. Convincing himself that the tuition alone proved they loved him was just an easy way to keep from dwelling. This winter holiday, like all the others, he suspected, would be awkward and mind-numbingly boring.

The Okazaki home was one of perpetual silence. His father being a corporate attorney, he had been little more than a phantom in Izuru's childhood who returned late at night and disappeared behind a newspaper in the morning. However, it probably would have made little difference what he did for a profession. His voice was all that remained a constant, and he never caught it delving into topics of the subjective or the familiar. Business was all that seemed to interest him. It often drove him to America or Europe, places only recognized by the expensive steins and highly polished cross-sections of wood turned into clocks that sat lifeless on the shelf, or fancy chocolates and pressed cookies that inadequately filled the hole left by his absence.

On the other hand, though these things could not talk, at least they did not have the potential to waste to begin with. The most sentimental thing his father had ever said to him was that he hoped one day his son would become a leader, like the president of a company, and hire someone like his father to represent him. "And buy his parents a penthouse condominium in Shibuya," his grandmother had leaned over and whispered to Izuru sarcastically. At the time, he had laughed off her bitterness; but something about the diplomatic life of a boarding school student had made him appreciate such unapologetic rancor a bit more in recent months.

His mother dealt in kimono. She dressed in business suits and thick makeup like an office lady and was always complaining about this or that fashion that was in style among the young people, when she wasn't fitting clients or away on buying trips. A day after Izuru returned home, she dragged him out with her to go shopping for Christmas and New Year's eves, saying in a tone that almost sounded genuine that she wanted to spend time with the son she barely got to see. It made him wonder in passing if it somehow had not occurred to her that it was because she and his father had sent him off to a boarding school in order to keep him on track to becoming that company president of their dreams that he was away for so long. She managed to ask the obligatory questions about his health and grades before slipping mindlessly again into gossip about people and fabrics he did not know nor cared to. He looked in the rear view mirror at the driver of the taxi, half hoping the man would recognize his silent plea for help, but he never once glanced in their direction.

"I'm sorry, Izuru," his mother said when she finally noticed his attention drifting. "I'm boring you, aren't I? Well, we just have to check on some designs that were supposed to be finished and pick up a few last minute things for the Christmas party. It shouldn't take long, and then I'll take you somewhere to eat and we'll go home."

Izuru grimaced. "You're having a party this year?"

"It's at the house of an associate of your father's, actually," she told him. He was seventeen, but she still spoke to him as though he were seven. "Some important individuals will be there and a couple of them happen to be my clients. Not that kimono is something people often wear to a Christmas party. Don't worry," she said when she saw his look, "we won't force you to come with us."

Izuru had no doubt he would not have been able to go even if he wanted to.

He glanced at the time on the dashboard. "It's already past one."

"Is it?" His mother looked skeptically at her watch. "How did that happen?" she said, but did not sound at all contrite. "I can make it quick if you're really hungry—"

"I'll just get something myself." The prospect of sitting in an overstuffed chair in the corner surrounded by gaudy fabrics and even gaudier women for more than an hour—as he knew it would be—was not at all appealing.

When the cab came to a stop outside her shop, they split ways, agreeing to meet up in an hour and a half. The restaurants on this street were all posh and pretentious, either expensive traditional eateries or dark European-inspired cafes. Instead Izuru took a bus to the department stores, where the food courts were packed with people shopping for Christmas and the New Year. People speaking Japanese or something else, so loudly he could barely hear the latest holiday ballads playing over the loudspeaker, let alone his own thoughts. The crowd made him feel better, as did the cheap, greasy food. Sitting at an equally cheap table, pressed nearly shoulder to shoulder with shoppers, he had the sudden desire to turn to stone and stay like this forever, surrounded by people who were too busy bustling about like bees for the sake of some loved one or other to notice him: a sibling or child, an old teacher that had once been helpful, someone at the office they sang karaoke with occasionally, or simply a boyfriend or girlfriend.

A plethora of signs advertising special sales indicated as clear as anything else the approaching end of the year. But in case one needed extra convincing, snow _daruma_ decorated the window display here, a plump inflatable Santa there. The white flakes of fiberglass that surrounded them were all one would see of snow around here. Izuru pretended to look at new books and CDs that had been spread out on the tables, but all the faces on their covers blurred into one and he would not remember any of the names. He stopped by a display of quality confections and alcohol, and on a whim bought a jar of caviar, not even sure if he would eat it but eager to rid himself of the money his mother had pushed into his hand when they parted ways. It weighed down his jacket pocket on the ride back to her shop.

Izuru never considered himself especially spiritual, though he had no choice but to be religious; but there was something about the commercialization of the holiday that bothered him—about the images of Christmas being twisted into some generic, capitalist, romantic event so that it might fit everyone's sensibilities. It was disingenuous.

Strange, but he would not have felt that way a year ago. He would not have cared.

His mother had laughed when he asked, regarding the party, if she and his father weren't going to Christmas mass. "Oh, Izuru," she had said fondly, "you're becoming quite the Christian." Like he was a puppy performing a cute trick. That was how seriously she considered his question. They weren't really Christians, his parents, at least no more than what was convenient. She wore a silver crucifix pendant at the hollow of her throat, but there was nothing one would recognize as being particularly Catholic behind it. She ridiculed in front of him the portraits of Jesus and Mary Izuru's grandmother kept in a place of reverence on her dresser, their hearts magically exposed and radiating holy light—these few pure memories he had from his childhood of what it was like to have real faith—as something superstitious and outdated.

Was it any wonder he could not bring himself to look forward to returning home, and lay as though dead for long hours in his room simply wondering what he was doing there at all?

In part, it was the girl who would be waiting for Izuru that made him dread the holiday. He had not been fully aware of how deep his dread went until he saw her again.

Kiyo was a freshman at college now, two years his senior, but once they had walked to school together. Their friendship had become one for special occasions when her parents sent her to a Christian girls' high school, and withered accordingly; and Izuru still blamed them for brainwashing his own folks on the Saint Michel idea. But the image of her in her black pleated skirt, her hair in two braids that sat heavy and immobile like black snakes on either shoulder, was what still came to his mind when he thought of seeing her again. Though it had never been an image to excite him, unlike the time she had caught him staring at her breasts, it loomed before him now like a premonition of death.

Kiyo called to ask him if he wanted to go out with her on Christmas Eve. Nothing made Izuru more uncomfortable, more aware of his isolation than seeing happy couples their age strolling around town, wrapped in their wool coats, effortlessly living up to their obligations to be sickeningly happy on this night in particular. What made her think he would enjoy being one of them? He expressed his surprise in a somewhat cruel manner that she didn't have a boyfriend now that she was at the university. She clammed up, and Izuru regretted asking. Her silence made him wonder if he might have caused her to foster those kinds of feelings for him without being aware of it, and he came down with a sudden feeling of claustrophobia. He was tempted to say he had a stomach ache and couldn't go out; it would not have been a total fabrication.

He accepted anyway.

They held hands as they strolled past the window displays of posh shops, past bars where the sounds of people singing karaoke to popular holiday songs could be heard briefly when a patron left. Was this supposed to be romantic? Walking the streets with this girl whom, he now realized with relief, he had never thought of as much more than a big sister? If he were to suddenly turn to her and say, "What do you think, _Nee-chan_?" would she suddenly act distant or laugh it off as a jest? He did not know where this sadistic urge to try came from. He had never resented Kiyo. But then again, it was not she that upset him. It was a cruel and asexual farce, their date, two people stumbling through the steps of a dance they had seen others perform; they were nothing more than actors—though perhaps Kiyo had not yet noticed it—and poor ones at that. If only his professor could see them like this, with their shy smiles and awkwardly clasped hands. . . .

Indeed, it was Mitani he blamed for his agony that night. Every now and then Izuru's thoughts would drift to him while Kiyo talked, and he would have to shake himself to find he had not heard a single word she had said. She might as well have been speaking into a vacuum.

No presents were exchanged. They both went home early.

That was the observation his parents made, their tones rising as they prepared to go out, as though it were abnormal for him not to be out sleeping with that good Christian girl who made her parents so proud. As though if he did, some of her filial piety might rub off on him. Of course, they would never have admitted to harboring those thoughts, but Izuru knew they thought them nonetheless.

He ignored them. He shut himself in his room and threw himself face-down on the bed. He inhaled the scent of detergent that clung to the quilt. He could not have expected to smell Mitani in it, but it disappointed him nonetheless that he did not. And he slowly became aroused, for no reason but that that man was absent. It felt like punishment—for his desires, perhaps, which, in contrast to those other young couples Kiyo had gazed at enviously, were not the norm. He tightened his fists in the comforter to keep them from moving down.

He had never wanted to return to school so badly before, but it was Mitani more than anything that compelled his need to do so. And it was need that plagued him, though different from before. Since that day he had unexpectedly fallen ill, his teacher had become less of a distant dream and more of a very real necessity. He had to be near Mitani, because that was the only way he knew of to soothe his ache, even if in doing so their proximity would only aggravate the already insufferable hunger inside him. It stood to reason that there was only one way ultimately to cure that ailment.

The school felt abandoned when Izuru returned to it by taxi on 28 December, hung about with the somber air of a deserted fortress. The sharp Gothic edges of the chapel and halls were stark and gray against the clear winter sky and chilly sea air, even the palms and evergreens drained of their color; and seagulls played on the cobblestones with a brashness and intelligence they never exhibited when students walked these courtyards in greater numbers, watching Izuru as though he were a phantom crossing over from the other side.

That was not to say the school was empty, however. There would be some third-years using the opportunity to study for college entrance exams, some for whom it was difficult to visit family members, and some like Izuru who were happier away from home. But Izuru did not expect to spend much time with them at all.

Mitani was spending his holiday at school, as well. He had no children, never mentioned a girlfriend, and whether he was on similar terms with his family—or even had one to speak of—he never said, but it was apparent that he was alone. In that way he and Izuru were two of a kind.

He was surprised when Izuru appeared outside his apartment three days before the new year. For some reason his smile fell when Izuru told him he had returned to escape the awkwardness and boredom of home. Had Izuru been mistaken in his decision to return so soon? Had he intruded on his professor's sacred solitude? With a man like Mitani, Izuru felt he could never be sure, and he was struck by a pang of guilt—a strange, uncharacteristic sense of not belonging, such as a person might feel at a hermit's doorstep, eager though he was to accept when Mitani invited him inside for a cup of tea.

Izuru's doubts were assuaged, however, when Mitani unexpectedly asked him if Izuru would like to accompany him on his trip to Unzen the next day. He had planned the trip months ago and had not expected to take anyone with him, but he said he couldn't bear the thought of Izuru staying at the school with no one to talk to and nothing to do without at least extending the invitation.

And since there was nothing else to occupy him, Izuru agreed. There was more to his quick acceptance than that, of course, reasons he could not very well voice. Mitani had reservations for a night at a traditional-style inn in the mountains. Just the thought of sleeping in the same vicinity as his teacher made Izuru's heart leap with anticipation.

Something nagged at his mind as well, like an angel tapping him on the head—whispering into the back of his brain, _This is your chance_—and he determined that no amount of ingrained graciousness would allow him to refuse the offer a second longer.

—

The bus rocked jerkily as it went up the mountain roads; and though the seats were far from full, the air was filled with the stifled coughs and rustling of other passengers, of college students laughing a little too loudly, of mothers murmuring to one another as their children twisted and writhed in boredom. Izuru and Mitani had nothing to say to one another, as though embarrassed into silence by the mundaneness of those around them, though no one so much as once turned a judging eye in their direction. Izuru watched the landscape go by outside the window, that already faded and bleak in winter became progressively more desolate the higher in elevation they went. Beside him, Mitani had become engrossed in a book. It made Izuru feel alone.

"Don't you know it's rude to read when you have company?" he said in jest and snatched the book away, saving the page with his finger. Ignoring Mitani's surprise and his own rudeness, he asked, "What are you reading anyway?"

"It's about Unzen. . . ." Mitani began, embarrassed.

"Oh?"

It was one of those moments when Izuru heard him speak the name, mumbled though it was, at the same moment he caught sight of it on the paper. He skimmed the page with his eyes; but then he stopped and actually read the words, and sobered. "The next day the torture began in the following way," it ran;

_One by one the seven were taken apart from the surrounding people, brought to the edge of the seething lake and shown the boiling water casting its spray high into the air—and they were urged to abandon the teaching of Christ or else they would experience in their bodies the terrible pain of the boiling water which lay before them. The cold weather made the steam rising from the bubbling lake look terrible indeed, and the very sight of it would make a strong man faint, were it not for the grace of God. But everyone of them, strengthened by God's grace, showed remarkable courage and even asked to be tortured, firmly declaring they would never abandon their holy faith._

As he read this last line in particular, Izuru could not help but hear the words as they might have been spoken in his teacher's voice. Beside him, Mitani was looking down at his hands, silent, and Izuru could only utter an awkward, "Sorry," and hand the book back. He chastised himself for looking forward to their trip with such selfish intentions in his heart. Hadn't he known the history of Unzen already? But it had become insignificant next to the thrill of simply being with Mitani that had implanted itself in his mind.

Yet even when they arrived, Izuru could not change his attitude to match Mitani's more serious mood. He could not grasp that meaning or that sensation that he thought Mitani wanted him to grasp in this place. The valleys that awaited them that had been so often compared to Christian and Buddhist hells alike struck him as no more than the end result of volcanic activity. When the mist finally cleared and the blue sky came out, even though it was the coldest part of winter, the bleakness of the landscape did have a certain brightness to it. It did take some effort to see Unzen as both the hot springs and geysers that attracted so many tourists and the historical site his teacher valued at the same time. Izuru could tell himself that actual people, men and women and children, Japanese with whom he shared his faith had been punished here by other Japanese for simply believing in a salvation through Christ; but grasping the tragedy of it, and the strength of the martyrs' determination to hold strong in their faith, was more difficult.

Mitani, for all the spontaneous, mirth-filled lectures Izuru had come to expect from him on campus, was silent. Was it the reverence of a pilgrim at a martyr's shrine, Izuru could not help but wonder, as he stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and shivered; or was it some other source of guilt, unconnected and unexplained, that seemed to haunt his teacher so?

One would not have been able to tell by looking at it these days that the springs had even been a place of persecution—that there had been a time when that boiling water had been slowly ladled onto people's bodies to make them apostatize. The steam that obscured the split crags and the water was an iron eliminating any traces of that long-ago habitation, the only sign of human interference being the clay vents in the ground put in place to keep the mountain from erupting. The scraggly pines, half dead from noxious gases, were like phantoms, relics of an age that had lost its relevance.

Families snapped photographs. Vendors sold corn on the cob and eggs boiled in the hot springs, and the sulfur that smelled like rotten eggs itself somehow made those items the sweetest Izuru had ever tasted. As he and Mitani sat together over their packed lunches, which now seemed second-rate in comparison, they talked as if they were in a place with a more cheerful history, with no mention of martyrs and apostates at all.

Not for the first time did Izuru experience that elusive, short-lived feeling of being old friends, the two of them, equals instead of teacher and student, so that, laughing, he corrected after Mitani said his name: "It's Izuru."

"Hm?"

"You should call me Izuru. Don't call me Okazaki anymore. We're friends, aren't we, Sensei?"

Mitani smiled uncertainly. "All right," he said, "but if that's to be the case then you have to start calling me Mitani. At least outside the classroom."

Izuru blushed. "Yes, Mitani . . . -sensei," he could not help but add. It didn't sound right without it. And Mitani laughed at him, after which Izuru could not tell if he had been truly serious at all.

That little burst of good humor must have had some effect on his teacher, however, because when they visited the museum afterwards, Mitani treated the displays of religious artifacts and instruments of torture, of photographs of the '91 eruption and Christian and Buddhist donations and captions, as any teacher would, with an awe more intellectual in nature, with the full distance of time. The way he spoke, as they stood close to one another in the small building that was little more than a converted station house, it was as though the entire class was there with them, yet his tone was as personal as if his hand were on Izuru's shoulder instead of clasped in the other behind his back.

"During the seventeenth century, when the persecution of Japanese Christians and missionaries was at its worst, and for a long time after, some of the communities went underground rather than face the officials and torture, and they disguised the outward signs of their faith with Buddhist images. They still prayed to Christ and Mary in private—it was not as though they had truly abandoned their faith. They just pretended not to believe. It was better to lie, they decided, and survive than to die in vain for their convictions.

"But they couldn't trust people on the outside the same way ever again, so they secluded themselves from the rest of Japan. Their descendants are the _kakure_, the hidden, and in some places they still guard their faith as though expecting someone to come and steal it away from them. They don't agree that the faith of the Meiji period evangelists was the same as the pure faith of the seventeenth century. I hear a lot of people say that mainstream Christianity has become too complacent with no one to challenge it. On the other hand, the _kakure_ are criticized for allowing Buddhism to corrupt their traditions too much—people say they aren't really Christians. But I wonder if anyone truly has the right to say that."

This was all familiar to Izuru, who had heard it in school before as it was a part of Nagasaki's history, albeit a sensitive one the other professors were very loath to bring up.

"Sensei, didn't Endo Shusaku say Christianity _has_ to adapt in order to survive in Japan? It seems to me that there isn't so much of a difference between the religions, except in the way they explain themselves. At heart everyone wants the same thing: an end to the suffering of this world."

"M-m." Mitani nodded slowly. "_Lex orandi, lex credendi._ As the people pray, so they believe. I don't suppose you could argue that the road to the adoration of Mary wasn't already paved by the adoration of Kannon. What I meant was, it's the conviction that's genuine, even if the doctrine is considered heretical. But you're probably too young to understand what a problem the Catholic identity truly was for previous generations anyway."

"And you aren't? You're not that much older than me."

Izuru had said that with sarcasm, meant to disguise and convey his hurt at being patronized. But Mitani just looked forward and said, "I guess you're right."

In one case was a _fumie_ from the period, the image of Jesus Christ carved into a block of wood that the apostates would tread on to prove they had abandoned their faith. It had captured Mitani's attention, but Izuru did not expect himself to be drawn to it as much as he was. It was the utter sadness the image evoked that grabbed hold of him and kept him staring into the case. The worn, shiny face that had been stepped on by feet both guilty and viscerally grateful, it seemed as if its nebulous features were a direct result of that guilt rather than any physical forces reshaping them, and the sin of apostasy that was transferred to itself—the very manifestation of Christ as he who takes away the infinite sins of the world. The beaten Christ—the ironic savior of Mark—the human Christ who is taken for granted against his will. It was the very image of love, though darkened and sunken by the pressure of so many feet, and of a patience with the failure of the hearts of men so bottomless as to give love in return for hatred and fear.

Izuru was surprised to find himself filled with admiration and reverence for a mere object, for how infinitely more genuine was the face on that _fumie_ than the one on that blank statue that hung above the altar at Saint Michel. _This_ was the pain and the humiliation of the crucifixion; _this_ was the agony of carrying the burden of the sins of an ungrateful mankind on one mortal back. This was real.

He glanced at Mitani out of the corner of his eye only to see another kind of sadness and regret displayed there. The only regret Izuru felt was that he could not quite grasp what his teacher was about, what had brought him to this place with the kind of excitement of a child going to the zoo if only to immerse himself in the guilt and oppression of the past. He wished suddenly that he could share in it.

"Perhaps we need to fall to the very depths of our existence before we can truly deserve to rise again," Mitani had told them once. Izuru had heard it said before in slightly different words about Japan's defeat in the war. Now Mitani's words came back to him with a religious clarity: "Into the gravest of our failures and our sins, and the sins others have committed against us. If we truly wish to achieve what is right, doesn't it stand to reason that we must first, and intimately, know wrong? Not just recognize it or accept its consequences, but truly _feel_ it, the terrible, unadulterated pain of it, in our very souls."

That is too difficult a task to be practical, Izuru had thought. He, who had thought himself strong, did not even see the potential to handle that kind of guilt in himself. In his youthful conviction, he identified with the martyrs over the apostates, and was left wondering what about the latter could be found to be so heroic. Nevertheless, what Mitani had said still struck him as a correct theory. It was because the ordinary soul found it too difficult to first fall that there were not more people as genuine as Mitani in the world.

They shared a room that night in the inn nearby where Mitani had a reservation. It was apparently a place catering to Unzen's pilgrims, and operated under the pretense of offering a little slice of the seventeenth century in everything from its architecture to sleeping arrangements. In the same manner, no one batted an eye when they said they would bring another futon up to the room. Mitani's nonchalance must have been a part of it, for he acted as though this sort of thing were commonplace, spending the night with a teenage boy, a student, in the mountains over the holiday. Izuru couldn't help thinking back to a time when it was commonplace for a disciple to stay the night beside his master, and trade intellectual pleasures for sexual ones; and he thought with the blood running hotly to his face that it must have occurred to everyone else as well. Those Edo fantasies that seemed so romantic and justified before in their distance filled him with a sense of shame now that reality so resembled them. In the lee of the religious conviction and drama of the mountain, even if it was centuries past, it felt selfish, even sacrilegious to allow his mind to turn towards depravity; but at the same time the situation left him powerless to stop it.

Izuru went about on pins and needles fixing his bedding in the room they would be sharing while Mitani bathed. His actions were conducted in silence so as to catch the sounds of water from the other side of the door, tormenting him with images of his teacher, wet and flushed from the steam. He didn't trust himself; it felt like his mind's control over his body was growing weaker, and at any moment the latter would push open the door as it longed to do, and then . . .

Then what? His own confusion frustrated him. He was serious about his feelings, so why did he lack so much faith in his actions? When his own turn came, it was all Izuru could do not to relieve the longing that the hot water only seemed to worsen. It was almost laughable, he thought, what aroused him. Just the knowledge that Mitani's naked body had been in this same place and this same water before him was enough to excite him. Izuru grew nervous to think when he finished they would be lying in the same room together all night, listening to each other breathe, and he would as usual find himself unable to do anything about it. When he could put off the inevitable no longer, he splashed himself with cold water again and hoped it might do its trick.

Mitani was asleep when Izuru at last emerged from the bath. Or, at least, he appeared to be. Admittedly, Izuru was glad for it. Turning off the light, he slipped into his own bed and lay on his back, staring up at the light fixture in the center of the ceiling. Tormenting him again were these urges to turn and embrace his teacher, to kiss and touch his body and be touched in return. In the dark, it did seem possible. Even the innocent rustle of the comforter as he moved suggested less innocent causes. He whispered, "Sensei," but there was no answer, and he could not even hear his teacher's breathing over the hum of the electric space heater.

That was all Izuru could bring himself to do. Even to turn and sit up to watch his teacher's sleeping face seemed too bold, and anxiety gripped his heart at the thought that Mitani would wake up and catch him at it, and want to know what he was thinking. "That you fascinate me. That I want you to like me. That I want you to make love to me." He certainly couldn't answer this way, although it was the truth. Fearing that, Izuru lay still, his heart beating like a small animal's.

It was hours before he finally got to sleep, slipping off just as he worried he might be forced to endure the tension all night. Sometime in the early morning hours, he thought he heard Mitani speak to him, but in the morning it seemed like a dream hardly remembered.

He woke feeling unrested, and at breakfast Mitani admitted he hadn't slept well either, joking that he wasn't used to sleeping on the floor anymore. Izuru said nothing. His vague sense of shame was enough to make him avoid Mitani's eyes; but whether it was his salacious thoughts the night before or the possible opportunity revealed only now to have been wasted that he regretted, he could not be sure.

He ended up falling asleep on the bus ride back, making up for the night before. Somehow he found himself leaning against Mitani's shoulder when he woke, his professor's arm around his own as he read the book that was in his other hand. Izuru leaned into his warmth, pretending to still be asleep in order to prolong this feeling as much as possible. As long as he was supposed to be out cold it was all right. There was something pure and asexual in Mitani's gesture that contented Izuru. And he felt guilty again for it, too, because his own intentions had been—and still were—so much the opposite. Once again, he begrudged Mitani this, while at the same time longing both to emulate and corrupt him.

—

"Shall I come by tomorrow?" Izuru said when they had returned to Saint Michel. They both agreed that it would not be proper to celebrate New Year's Eve alone, and Mitani nodded. "I'll order dinner out," he said, his generosity bringing a smile to Izuru's lips that this time was nothing but gracious.

The apartment complex where the professors and staff had their rooms matched the cold Gothic style of the other school buildings on the outside, but inside was simple and modern and comfortable. Stepping into Mitani's room that evening was like being transported instantaneously to some place far away from the rigid and musty atmosphere of Saint Michel. The smell of take-out sitting and steaming on the kitchenette counter wafted toward him, the news playing on the small television set filling the silence their awkward greetings left.

As though he had just remembered, before he removed his coat Izuru said, "I brought you something, too," and produced the jar of caviar that had been weighing down his pocket. "A sort of end-of-the-year present. I wanted to show my appreciation for everything you've done for me. It isn't much . . ."

"You didn't have to do something like that."

"It's okay if you don't like it."

"No, it's not that at all. I love this sort of stuff, but I never have the luxury . . ." Mitani tried to hide a smile, and it ended up boyish and lopsided on his lips. "People might think it was a bribe."

"Who cares what anyone else thinks," said Izuru. "It's New Year's Eve." And a crooked smile crept onto his lips as well. There must have been something in his look that set Mitani's mind at ease, something like what passes between people sharing an inside joke. After a moment, he nodded as he hefted the small jar in his hand. "Thanks," he said quietly.

They ate sitting around the coffee table in front of the television, talking about their trip to Unzen—which now, with a day's cushion, could be discussed in a lighter fashion—and the winter holiday that seemed, after the last few days, already so long ago. Meanwhile, the annual Red and White Song Competition played on the television screen, and one by one singers performed their hits of the past year. Against this backdrop, the subject turned to Izuru, and Mitani asked him the inevitable: if his parents minded him spending the rest of the holiday at school.

"Why should they? They're probably glad to be rid of me." Izuru couldn't help his sudden bitterness.

"Why? What happened?"

"Nothing. That's the problem, really. All they seem to do when we're actually all home together is ask me how my grades are, and do I like my classes—but they keep asking the same questions even after I've answered them. I don't think they care about me at all. I mean, they care enough to make sure I'm not dead, but they don't care to ask me about _me_." He took a deep breath and stuffed a gyoza into his mouth as though doing so might stop the resentment within him from coming out. "I was bored out of my mind. I couldn't stand it anymore."

"I'm sure they love you more than you think."

So Mitani said in passing, some aside uttered before he took another sip of tea, but Izuru gaped at him. Perhaps his reaction was a bit exaggerated, because the sip of tea almost came back out Mitani's nose. "Sensei," Izuru grumbled, "stop being all mentorly. It doesn't suit you."

"Some people just aren't very good at acting like parents," Mitani clarified, once he had sobered a bit. "It doesn't mean they're unqualified for the job."

"You obviously don't know my parents."

Izuru turned to the screen, but could not keep the act up for long. He shot a look back over his shoulder in good-humor a second later. "Do you know, in all the time I was home I probably told them more about Fujisawa and the others than me. They seem to really care whether I have lots of friends. You wouldn't call that a sign of guilt, would you, Sensei?"

"I think that's wishful thinking on your part, Izuru."

"Yeah? Well, I think it's the only reason they let me come back early."

"Then why are you here with your boring professor?" Mitani said. "Aren't the other kids having parties tonight?"

To his surprise, Izuru sobered. "I lied, you know," he said. "They're not my friends. I don't have any."

"That's not true. All the others look up to you."

"Only because I'm student council president." He turned back to the food, a slight sigh escaping him. "I don't know," he said, refusing to meet his professor's eyes. "All I know is, the only reason I came back early was that I wanted to see you, Sensei. I'm not lying when I say you're the only person I've ever truly looked up to."

"Surely there are better candidates than me."

"I'm serious," Izuru said, but he did not miss the note of regret in Mitani's words. Thinking it would be good to change the subject, he began again, "Anyway, you never told me what your family is like."

But Mitani did not answer. He merely stared past Izuru as though he hadn't heard him, leaving the boy to wonder if he had said something out of turn or if his question really had fallen on deaf ears. He had so many questions for Mitani, but it always seemed to him that when the time came to ask them, he found himself prying where he shouldn't.

He opened his mouth to take it back when Mitani said, "I love this song."

Izuru turned back to the TV screen, where dancers dressed in matching kimono paraded around the stage behind an energetic middle-aged singer. "Enka?" he groaned, and leaned back on his hands. "Sensei, you _are_ a square."

"I prefer 'old mind,'" Mitani corrected him. "And I'll bet you a thousand yen the women win this year."

"Make it two." Izuru couldn't help his grin. "Square."

The songs passed, and after another hour they opened the jar of caviar to have with crackers. Izuru offered to heat up the sake, thinking that if he did that much, Mitani could not out of reciprocity prohibit him from having a cup himself; but in any case, he need not have worried, as the age-old tradition that one should never drink alone, especially on New Year's Eve, won out. It wasn't long before they were both singing along with the lyrics on the bottom of the screen and sharing a good laugh. Izuru felt closer to his professor than ever before. He felt like in that simple act of laughing together, even if it was at their own expense, over something far removed from history or academics, they had opened their hearts to one another. To say nothing of the fact that Izuru could not honestly remember the last time he had laughed aloud with anyone.

Of course, he knew the sake had an effect on him—he felt it warming his blood and lowering his inhibitions—but he had to believe that there was something in Mitani's attitude toward him, something in his smile or posture that might tell Izuru his feelings were returned. As they sat side by side on the floor, slowly coming down from their mirth, their backs against the sofa, he drew his knees to his chest and dared to lean against his professor. Instead of stiffening, he was pleasantly surprised when Mitani put an arm around him a few tense seconds later, just as he had on the bus when he had thought Izuru was asleep.

Again came that voice in Izuru's mind urging him not to waste this chance. This time, sensing the prize within his grasp, he could no longer hesitate to take it.

Their sake cups were empty. Raising himself to his knees, Izuru reached for the carafe, saying, "Hey, Sensei, shall I get us a refill?"

At least, that was what he had intended to do. He never quite made it so far as the kitchen, or even to his feet. Mitani began to turn to him to respond, and Izuru saw in his professor's eyes in that half a second all the trust and warm appreciation he had longed more than anything to receive since the start of term. It was only a look, but a strong, irrational panic seized him suddenly that it might only be an illusion cast by the flickering light from the television screen, or a result of the sake. Either way, he could not bear the idea of losing it.

Instead, Izuru leaned forward and kissed his professor's lips. He spared hardly a thought for the consequences of his actions, though he could feel the sake flowing through him, making his blood hot, his mind swim. That was no deterrent. All Izuru knew was what he was compelled to do, and the action, the barest touch of Mitani's flesh against his, felt only natural, like magnets coming together. He felt his face grow warm, but it was not from shame or embarrassment so much as from the yearning that arose like a flood from within him. He had gone through these motions before, but there was something about kissing Mitani that made that simple act feel so novel, so pure, and so much more intoxicating than the sake. It pulled the space between Izuru's navel and groin taut like the string of a bow, and with each meeting of their lips it was twanged. A pleasant nausea came over him as he pressed harder, tilting his head so their lips might fit together more easily. The hand that had never quite reached the sake carafe cupped Mitani's jaw.

At first Mitani did not resist. He accepted Izuru's kiss with wonderment, perhaps wondering in his surprise if _this_ was really what he had been led to believe all his life was worse than murder in the eyes of God, this heavenly sensation. A gasp escaped him, mirroring Izuru's elation, and, feeling invincible, Izuru opened his mouth against his professor's to drink in that sound. The saltiness of caviar and sake on Mitani's tongue was such a carnal taste that he let out a small, choked moan. . . .

And somehow in doing so he shattered the spell. Mitani pushed him away.

He had not been rough, but there was a frightened forcefulness in the gesture that made Izuru hold his breath. Nor did his expression leave any room for doubt as to his professor's true feelings. The sinking feeling that came over Izuru was one he was not used to, so at first he did not recognize it for what it was:

Failure.

He refused to acknowledge it, until all in an instant the reality of his situation hit him. He had taken this trust between them too far, past the point it could be mended, all because he thought he had glimpsed that thing he wanted most in Mitani's eyes, when he should have known better than to think it could ever be there to begin with. Izuru realized then that he'd never even bothered to ask if Mitani had a girlfriend. But he saw the emptiness in his professor's expression, the way he recoiled from Izuru, and a surge of anger rose within him.

"What are you doing?"

Izuru did not miss the disgust that undermined his professor's blunt words. "What do you think?" he said less than gently.

"Jesus, Izuru, you said you were going to get us a refill. Why . . . What would you do _that_ for?"

"Because I felt like it. Why else?"

"That's not a little thing you can just think about doing and do it."

"I was curious. I wanted to see what it would be like to kiss you, so I did it. Haven't you ever felt like that, too?"

"No." Mitani's answer was uncharacteristically final. "Not about my own sex. Those feelings are . . . abnormal. Unhealthy."

"That's just what we've been told to think. You're the one who's been telling us to think for ourselves, so don't tell me you actually believe it. The kind of stuff you've had us read, Sensei, you mean to tell me, honestly, that you've never at least been curious? You didn't like it?"

Shock crossed his teacher's face. "And you did?"

Izuru smiled.

"I've wanted to do that for a long time," he confessed. "Yeah, I liked it. I liked it a lot."

But Mitani dismissed his answer, running a shaky hand through his hair. No doubt he was thinking back to all the other times they had met outside of class, and chastising himself for never having guessed this could be what Izuru had truly intended. God, to think they had shared a hotel room together! How many professors lost their jobs, their teaching licenses for less than that? "I shouldn't have let you drink. You've had too much—the alcohol's gone to your head—"

"I'm not drunk!"

Izuru forced a chuckle and it seemed to his own ears to come from a stranger; but he could not believe the evening was coming to this. "I'm not so drunk that I don't know what I'm doing, anyway," he admitted. "I told you: I've been thinking about it for a long time. I'd begun to think that maybe you felt the same way about me."

"Based on what?"

"I don't know. Gut feeling? I guess I was just hoping I wouldn't be wrong."

Mitani reached for his sake cup automatically, but, remembering it was empty, decided against it. In any case, Izuru wasn't the only one it had affected. "Well, you were wrong," he said quietly. "I don't harbor any perverted feelings like those."

"Perverted. . . ." Izuru clenched his jaw and forced himself to nod. Every ounce of his being resisted admitting defeat, but if what Mitani said was really true, if he had really been that misguided . . . "Yeah," he said, "I guess I was wrong."

And determined to make a hasty retreat, he got to his feet.

"Where are you going?" Mitani asked him.

If that had been desperation Izuru caught in his voice, however, the boy ignored it. "Back to my room," he said. It was just his imagination. Mitani did not care about him as much as he had claimed. Everything he had said before had been to alleviate his own sense of obligation, and he was still, after all, just another educator doing his job.

That was what Izuru was thinking when a hand closed around his wrist.

"You can't go anywhere like this," Mitani said.

With a snort, Izuru yanked his arm away. "Why, because you'll get reprimanded if anyone finds out I'm drunk?"

"Yes," came the blunt response.

And Izuru wanted so badly to pretend that was all Mitani was—that he hadn't felt so warm and desperate beneath Izuru's lips. "Why should I care?" Already he could feel the fight leaving him, bitter disillusionment sinking in. "I don't want to stay here any longer. And why should you want me to, if you find me that disgusting?"

"Please. For my sake. I don't know what I did to mislead you, but whatever it was, believe me when I say I regret it."

Mitani combed his fingers nervously through his long hair, his hand seeming to tremble as he stood facing Izuru, yet effectively avoiding looking him in the eye. "Can't we just admit it was a mistake, say we had too much to drink, and pretend it never happened? I wouldn't want you to be disciplined for this, either, Izuru. I know it will be awkward, but stay a little while longer."

The air blown out of his sails, Izuru could only look stubbornly past him.

With a slight sigh, Mitani gave up. "I . . . I'm going to boil the water. If you want some tea or something . . ."

He trailed off, and went to the kitchenette to put the kettle on. The sounds of the television program came back to Izuru then, an audience laughing at some pop star's poor sense of humor. It felt like someone else was controlling Izuru's body as he walked back to the couch and sat down. He didn't feel like himself. The desire to turn to stone returned, namely, this time, before the shock wore off and the devastation Izuru knew was to follow hit him full-force in front of Mitani.

Who had the gall to call to him from the kitchenette, "Are you sure you're feeling all right?"

"I'm not feeling sick, if that's what you mean," Izuru answered woodenly back. Whether he was all right was another matter entirely.

There was a pause, and then Mitani said in the uncomfortable silence, "Look, you can spend the night here if you want. You know, to sleep off . . . I know it doesn't look it, but the couch is actually rather comfortable."

"I'm sure it is," Izuru said. Perhaps he was meant to take the offer as some kind of apology, but it felt to him then like anything but. He could never make Mitani understand what an extremely bitter pill this was to swallow, this feeling that for once in his life Izuru would not get his way.

And it was the one time that actually mattered.

—

For all that he had drunk that evening, Mitani could not get to sleep that night. The memory of Izuru kissing him resurfaced in vivid detail whenever he closed his eyes, melting indistinguishably into the erotic dreams of which he had felt an unwitting victim. For hours he lay awake in the dark in a state halfway between sanity and madness, between arousal and disgust.

The one fact he held on to with any conviction was that Izuru had betrayed him. Maybe it was true what Fujisawa said, that Izuru had only made himself ill for their teacher's attention. But if that were the case, was anything Izuru had done or said—not least among which his speech to the student council about following the teachings of Christ—genuine? As much as he wanted to deny that, Mitani could not help but wonder, as he revisited every discussion between the two of them over the past couple months, trying to glean from them Izuru's true intentions.

But as much as Mitani wanted it to be, the issue was not that simple. He could not admit it to Izuru, the fear of student conspiracy still looming large in his mind, but he had liked it. And that was one truth for which he had only his own body to blame. The kiss, Izuru's weight against him, everything. He had liked it too much. And that was what was so wrong. It was so wrong that even now the thought crossed his mind of going to Izuru, who slept like the dead on his sofa, and doing the unthinkable.

God, was this who he really was? Was this the true Mitani, a deviant who had been hidden from his conscious self, deep inside him his entire life? And why did he feel so eager to embrace that nature when he knew how sinful it was? But he could not find a satisfactory answer to that question, and it continued to torture him until morning.

They ate a silent breakfast, coffee and toast, sitting across from one another at the small dining table without once making eye contact, conversing the least amount necessary. Then Izuru went back to his own dorm.

One need not have looked very far to find there were plenty of things to do to pass the time the last few days of the holiday. Taking breaks from their study sessions, the other students kicked a soccer ball around or played Frisbee in the cold air outside in the courtyards; or else they gathered around a table in the library to play the _One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets_ card game as per the New Year tradition. Izuru found it a welcome diversion, focusing all his thoughts on remembering and finding the appropriate capping verses. Perhaps he even laughed a little, throwing himself fully into the friendly competition with his peers, just one teenage boy among a dozen others. After all, this was where he was supposed to be. This was where he belonged: the student body president in and among the student body.

But it was not enough to make Izuru forget, let alone forgive, what had transpired New Year's Eve, which he only fully realized when Mitani showed up at his door the next day. The young professor had a haggard look about him, as though he had not slept in days. Rather than feeling sympathetic, Izuru found himself glaring at the sight of him.

"Sensei." His voice sounded cold and distant to his own ears. "What are you doing here?"

When Mitani asked out of habit if he was disturbing him, Izuru shook his head, answered a noncommittal, "Come in," and stepped aside, closing the door after his professor and crossing his arms.

"This is a nice room," Mitani said, looking around the single; but it was obvious to them both that he was only filling the silence. "No, it's not," Izuru said, and repeated his question: "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to see if you wanted to get something to eat, if you haven't already, since it's past noon. . . ."

"You came here just to ask me that?"

Mitani colored. "No." Whatever he had to say, it was obviously something difficult for him. He confessed after a moment, "No, I . . . I came because I had to talk to you. I was thinking about what happened."

_What happened._ Was that what it was going to be referred to from this point on? Izuru rolled his eyes, but any anger he might have harbored for his professor the night before seemed absent when he needed it most. "There's nothing to talk about," he said with a shrug. "I made a mistake and I regret it. You were right to say we should forget about it."

"But that's just it," said Mitani in a hushed tone. "I can't forget about it. That's what's driving me mad."

With a heavy sigh, he sat down on the edge of the bed, his hands hanging in surrender between his knees. "You weren't trying to set me up, were you?" he asked.

Izuru started. "Of course not." He resented the mere suggestion.

Mitani's shoulders slumped in something like relief. "That's good, I guess. So, then, I guess I can tell you, discreetly, that maybe I didn't hate what you did as much as I said? Maybe it piqued my curiosity a bit. Maybe I liked it . . . somewhat."

Izuru regarded him silently.

"But I was also afraid," Mitani went on. "You must be able to understand that. You and I were taught the same things in our religious education. Whether it feels good or not, it's still wrong. It's still a corruption of God's will to have these kinds of thoughts about each other, even if we can't help them. Because nothing good can come of them."

"You don't sound that penitent, though."

"I've been trying. But no matter how hard I try to change my thoughts or how guilty I feel, I still can't deny that there are some things the sin of which I _want_ to feel for myself. It must be the scholar in me; that's all I can think of to explain it. Otherwise . . . Otherwise, how will I know what the truth is, one way or the other?"

He tilted his face up, as though imploring Izuru for some sort of confirmation. Denial, even. Any answer more concrete than the half-assed one he had given. But instead, Izuru only took his professor's face in his hands, and, leaning down, pressed their lips together. Whether something in Mitani's words had renewed his hope, or he only thought he could not make his situation any more hopeless than it already was, it did not seem to matter to Izuru.

Either way, when Mitani pulled away this time it was only to say, "This isn't Confession, Izuru. Just because I've admitted my guilt, it doesn't somehow make this okay."

But even as he said that, his lips were brushing like hungry ghosts against Izuru's skin. "Jesus," the boy sighed against him. "You think I care about that?"

They kissed again, and Mitani, for all he had said about guilt and sin, made no move to resist it, not even when Izuru placed a knee on the mattress beside his hip and laid them both down on the comforter. Somehow, though there was no logical reason it should have, it felt only natural to surrender to Izuru's guidance, to his sure touch. Trembling slightly, still unsure how he should feel, he allowed Izuru to teach him for once, pulling himself closer to Mitani's body as they turned onto their sides.

Mitani tangled his fingers in Izuru's short hair, and the boy swallowed a moan deep in his throat. "Touch me, Sensei," he murmured, his eyes dark and longing like in Mitani's dreams as his gaze flickered across his professor's face.

Mitani thought he had been. "Where?"

"Everywhere. Here, like this." And as though Mitani needed direction, Izuru's fingertips traveled down his abdomen, making goose pimples rise on Mitani's limbs as he tried to mirror Izuru's actions. He caressed the boy's arm and laid his hand on Izuru's waist, but Izuru grew impatient and grabbed his wrist as they kissed, moving that hand lower onto his hip, sliding it up under the hem of his sweater. Needing only that invitation, Mitani's fingers dove under the back of the sweater, his palm spreading flush over the small of Izuru's back, greedy for the heat of his skin through the thin cotton shirt he wore beneath.

The curve of his spine and the way his waist dipped with each writhing motion, each heavy breath against him—Mitani had almost forgotten that the very youth and masculinity he treasured in Izuru's body beneath his fingers was something all his upbringing told him was forbidden, but that knowledge only made him want to delve deeper. "M-m . . . Sensei . . ." Izuru breathed just as he had in that first dream, to just the same effect. With their bodies pressed as close together as they were, there was no way Izuru could have mistaken his body's reaction.

Suddenly self-conscious, Mitani broke away and rolled onto his back. With nowhere else to go, Izuru did the same, tilting his head to rest against Mitani's shoulder as he caught his breath.

"I shouldn't be here," Mitani said. "Doing this." But made no effort to move. "What if someone walks in and catches us?"

"If that happens, I'll make sure they keep quiet about what they see," Izuru said so nonchalantly that Mitani thought he must be making a joke. "Did I take things too far?"

"Probably." Mitani sighed. "But I guess it was sort of an experiment, wasn't it?"

"M-m. An experiment, huh?"

Yes, Mitani assured himself, that was all this was: He was only satisfying an intellectual curiosity, and after all, had that ever hurt anyone? Taking comfort in that thought, Mitani allowed himself to close his eyes for a moment, and did not notice that Izuru had sat up until he felt the boy's hands on the button of his fly, dangerously close to his erection. He started. "Izuru, what are you doing?"

"Relax." Izuru's eyes flickered reassuringly to his before he concentrated again on his fingers' work. "You can't go out like this. What will everyone think?"

"You don't have to . . . It'll go away by itself," Mitani tried, but Izuru only laughed at that.

"But it's my fault, isn't it? Besides, I _want_ to do this for you, Sensei," he mumbled. Nor could his intention be clearer as he leaned over from where he sat on the edge of the bed. On one level it repulsed Mitani, but he found himself strangely unable, and unwilling, to argue. How there could be something pure in Izuru's manner escaped logic, when the act itself was so filthy, but it was there nonetheless. Mitani could only utter his name in half-hearted protest at the first cautious touch of flesh against flesh, first of Izuru's fingers, then his tongue.

Mitani let out a ragged sigh in place of a moan, conscious of the notoriously thin dorm walls. He closed his eyes, partly in pleasure, but also partly from the guilt he felt, which was inescapable, at seeing Izuru's vermilion, adolescent lips around him. But the image remained behind his eyelids, arousing even in its grotesqueness, and he knew it would not take much before he lost control.

"Izuru . . ." he started, tangling his fingers in the boy's hair, but it only seemed to be taken for encouragement. "Izuru, stop—" But Izuru resolutely ignored him. When Mitani came, he seemed to shudder himself, eyelashes fluttering in his own quiet, sympathetic orgasm. He braced himself, his Adam's apple bobbing, his free hand wrinkling the fabric of Mitani's trousers as he stifled a moan around Mitani's cock. It was a beautiful sight. But with the clarity of the moment after ejaculation, the boy's ecstasy seemed as bestial to Mitani as the satiation of a leach.

He wasn't aware his shame showed so clearly on his face until Izuru asked him cautiously, "Sensei?"

The sincerity of his concern in light of such a perverse act—he was still wiping the corners of his mouth clean—moved Mitani. Izuru's eager audacity, allowing his desire to sweep them both away pell-mell, without any regard for the rules they should have respected. . . .

That must have been what they called the reckless invincibility of youth. It stirred such contradictory emotions and desires within Mitani that it was a while before he found the wits to answer, and then he could only manage a dazed, "Hm?"

"Did I go too far that time?" Izuru asked him, dropping to the bed on one elbow to line up beside his professor.

"Yes," Mitani breathed toward the ceiling.

Izuru was silent for a moment as he rolled onto his stomach, and gazed at the window. Then he said, "Can I come over tonight?"

Mitani was surprised by the readiness of his own answer.

"Yes."

—

An experiment was what this was, Mitani told himself as he pulled off his clothes in the dark of his room, and he would not turn back until his curiosity was satisfied. Izuru's insistent touches would not let him in any case, nor could he willfully tear himself away from this wonderful scientific discovery that was the boy's naked body beneath him, an unexplored kingdom whose every valley and hillock that flexed with each ragged intake of breath he longed to map thoroughly and commit to his fingers' memory.

Izuru's own were cold on his skin from the winter's night air, if only at first, but his breath was hot against Mitani's face and neck. As was the inside of his thigh at Mitani's waist, the blood pumping in his veins like magma flowing below the surface. He was perfect, just like in Mitani's most vivid dreams. The subtle shifting of weight in Izuru's buttocks as he kneeled over his professor, the rumbling deep in Izuru's throat that vibrated beneath Mitani's mouth, the muscles in his stomach leaping with the throbbing ache of unsatisfied pleasure—each of these minute sensations was singular and intoxicating to Mitani, pulling him deeper into his transgression. Izuru's breathing filled his ears like the sound of waves, and he felt he would gladly submerge himself in them. He was already drowning beneath Izuru's dark gaze.

Feeling the boy's need rise in tandem with his own, Mitani was acutely aware of how grave a leap this exploration was from that curiosity he had experienced before in private, that he had thought so horrible when Izuru indulged him only the other night. He was intimately conscious of the mortal sin of it, and knew that to give in to these desires with a boy and a student was no less than an act of ethical suicide.

Yet the guilt he should have felt was melted away, or, rather, overwhelmed by the utter and inexplicable purity of the sensations that coursed through his body. It was a curious, incongruous thing—a fact that simply should not have been, like catching the scent of spring flowers on the air in the middle of winter. Unnatural, yes, but who would complain of its beauty? Who would willfully wish it to end?

Izuru's arm was taut as he leaned his weight on it, and with the other hand guided Mitani's cock inside him. The gasps that fell from his open lips must have been akin to those of the saints in their ecstasies, penetrated by arrows or burned up by licking flames. Mitani sighed as he was enveloped in that heat. The words came to his mind unbidden: "Forgive us our trespasses." It was not that he doubted Izuru's forgiveness, however; that was no longer a question.

But they were both, in a sense, trespassing. Though it felt like a triumphant entrance through a gate on the way of youth, it was a forbidden world into which they had tread—a world they had been warned would be like Hell, but felt without a doubt like Heaven, lush with apricot and lilac. Perhaps that was the reason for forbidding it, like the fruit of knowledge that grew in Eden. Like St Augustine and the pear stolen from another's garden, the source of this thrill was indistinguishable to them. Whether it was the sweet taste of the sin itself, or the simple illicitness of the act, in the end it made no difference: All rational thought was washed away in the flood of release.

"What are you going to do for room check?" Mitani asked as he slowly caught his breath. A glance at the digital clock told it was nearly nine o'clock in the evening, but the sky outside had been dark much longer.

Izuru had no intention of leaving. "If the dorm chief has a problem with my absence, I'll fix it with him," he said while laying breathy kisses on his teacher's skin—as though that were the way to solve everything. He managed to find some new reserve of energy deep down inside his professor, and then Mitani no longer cared.

At some point, lying in some afterglow, they fell asleep. The sun shining at its acute winter angle into the room was what finally woke Izuru, telling him instantly that he had overslept. He was wrapped in Mitani's bedsheets, but his professor was nowhere to be seen. Pulling on his slacks and shirt, he padded out to the living area. But he was alone.

That morning sun was shining through the stained glass window panes behind the altar of the chapel, as well. As brilliant and translucent as the jewels that paved the roads of Heaven, the colored panes hid the sun from view, separating and spreading each spectrum of its light throughout the inside of the building, setting dust motes aflame as they drifted silently through the abandoned space with the vague scent of candles. The crucifix, meanwhile, backlit, remained in shadow.

Mitani was in a sense glad for that, as he kneeled in one of the pews, alone in the chapel, his hands clasped on the hard back of the pew in front of him that dug uncomfortably into his wrists. In his view, this discomfort was the least he deserved.

_I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be—_

Mitani bowed his head and hunched his shoulders.

"I've done a terrible thing," he whispered. "Against my own will maybe, but nevertheless, I gave in to my body's desires that I've tried so hard this last month to be rid of. Maybe if it was a woman, someone outside this place I wasn't responsible for, it wouldn't have been so bad—it's not like I took any vows—but as it was . . . Given who I am here and . . . and who _that person_ is . . . To commit such a reviled sin, I don't know if I can even be forgiven that much, but please, my God, if you have any pity on this sinner help me to overcome these desires." Pressing his forehead to the sides of his clasped hands: "_Help me to understand why they are so wrong._ Because I have _tried_. I've tried to grasp that one truth, but no matter what I do, I cannot make myself understand."

Father Robert had put it in the plainest language when Mitani had gone to him in desperation, his sinful dreams refusing to leave him in peace. It was almost scientific, his wording. The priest told him that everyone, every living thing, was put on the earth for a purpose: to create new life and protect the generations to come. It was for that purpose alone, that crucial chink in God's plan, that sexual desires were made to exist.

But what could come of the union of two men? Nothing. Nothing, that is, but pain and torment. Thus the Lord forbade homosexual relations and made that empty act a sin before the eyes of Heaven.

In his conscious mind, Mitani had known that. He was a scholar, he possessed an analytical mind: He knew that, biologically, for the propagation of a species, the argument was sound. Nevertheless . . .

"I can't understand why each time I try to see reason, the act itself seems less and less irrational. It feels . . ." _No._ No, he told himself, he could not call it that, but . . . "Natural." But he wanted to. "But how can that be?"

He did not believe in devils, but he recognized the ease with which a person could slip into superstition. He was well aware of the snowball effect which paranoia had on the mind once it first took hold. He had watched people in his own life driven mad by their inability to master their guilt. And he had sworn never to become like that. What went wrong?

He never claimed to be perfect, but faith was something that was supposed to protect you. Even from your own innate demons, if you had enough of it. "And as the only element of salvation," the fictional Adso had said, "I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions." But that statement that had resonated for him with so much truth before seemed suddenly grossly insufficient.

God, don't abandon me, he prayed with desperation in his heart of hearts, but lacked the courage to say it out loud.

From the doorway that connected the narthex and nave, Izuru watched him. Like an outsider looking into a world to which of his own will he had made sure he would never again have access. Yet he felt a queer twang of envy that did not belong. A blasphemous thought entered his mind and planted a seed there in his subconscious: a fear that the religion he claimed as his own might set itself up as his rival if he allowed it. That his own Christian faith might threaten the one thing he had come to value more than life itself.

Not wanting his presence there known, Izuru slipped out of the chapel. Out of sheer force of habit, he almost dipped his fingers into the bowl of water mounted on the wall to cross himself but, for some reason even he did not know, stopped himself short.

—

When classes started again, Fujisawa knew something had changed. It was not anything obvious that told him so. On instinct, perhaps, he picked up on Izuru's shyness toward him, and a more reserved edge to his attitude of superiority. Fujisawa had expected to return smug, triumphant, eager to mock Izuru's own pathetic vacation, but somehow it seemed—though he couldn't point to any reason why—as though the situation was just the opposite. He felt like he was being mocked, but how or for what he could not ascertain.

Izuru was hiding something. That much Fujisawa was sure of. It was not knowing what that irritated him more than anything.

He heard from some of the third-years that Izuru had spent the latter part of the holiday on campus, but they could tell him little more than that with any certainty no matter what he did to refresh their memory. And he could hardly ask Izuru directly what the purpose of it had been without giving away his suspicion. As it was, he did suspect that Izuru had taken advantage of his absence during the holiday, had gained the upper hand in one way or another, and that Fujisawa's presence at Saint Michel would have been all that was necessary to stop him. It was the affair with the duels all over again, he thought, resentment resurfacing with a vengeance within him.

Then he heard a rumor that Izuru and Mitani had gone to the mountains together, to that morbid Unzen of all places. If it were true, he had no choice but to treat it as an act of betrayal.

—

As though it had been auspiciously timed, the new year's lesson brought them out of the Dark Ages of Europe into the illumination of Italy's Renaissance. New scientific discoveries again challenged the infallibility of the Church's word with accusations of heliocentricity, and these renewed heresies coincided with the faith's revival of its roots, melding almost seamlessly into the layers of Greco-Roman myth and symbolism that were heaped afresh onto the holy icons, and the Hellenic worship of the male body as the very image of the beauty of God's Creation and dominion over the Universe. The old lords of the feudal system saw their ancient reign set like the full moon with the rise of a wealthier, more powerful merchant class, and papal scandals followed accordingly when the new ruling class realized salvation could be bought. Perspectives underwent a revolutionary change, whether in philosophies on life and the world, or in art.

Mitani had them examining the two hand in hand, jumping into the Italian Renaissance unit with even more childlike excitement than before. The grand monumentalism of Donatello and Michelangelo; the pagan poetry of Botticelli; the tender loftiness of Raphael and daring psychology of da Vinci—all captured in a slide photograph.

When it came time for the students to discuss what they had seen and ask questions, Fujisawa languidly raised a hand.

The other hand supported his chin as he said, "I have a question."

There was something in his tone that made Mitani hesitate. "Yes?"

The boy smiled. "Well," he began, assuming a tone of innocent curiosity that fooled no one, "from all we've seen, it would appear that Rome in those days had a rather lax policy on homosexuality—in fact, if anything they seem downright encouraging. Is that not the case, Sensei?"

Izuru started. He shot a concerned look at Mitani. But if their professor saw anything to make him self-conscious in that assertion, he hid it well. "What gave you that impression, Fujisawa?"

"Looking at what they considered religious art in the Renaissance, and what the Vatican has in its collection. Take Donatello's 'David.' I'm sure it was a major breakthrough in sculpture technique, but it's also just another example of ephebiphilism sanctioned by the Church. You know whoever commissioned it had to be some sick pervert to twist a scriptural icon into the poster boy of pederasty. The feather on Goliath's helmet goes right up his ass."

His classmates grimaced. "That's sick, Fujisawa."

"I'm just telling it like it is." He shrugged. "You can see for yourself."

"That piece was a private commission," Mitani pointed out. "The most it has to do with the Church is the patron's donations or political protection. The Church did not have the luxury of choosing its supporters based on what they did in private, especially if they were so powerful."

"Granted. But Michelangelo was doing work for the Church all the time—they practically worshiped him—and it's well known he was a homosexual."

"That's mere speculation," Izuru said. To the rest of the class, his addition to the conversation did not bat one eye. But Fujisawa's face lit up with the challenge, and perhaps with a belief he was on the right track. "You have to take into consideration that in those days it was illegal for women to pose nude for artists."

Fujisawa smirked.

"Fair enough. But that still doesn't explain his popularity. Personally, I don't see how his art was that great. What he's really remembered for is reviving the Classical style, and Sensei should know—er, having a masters in art history and everything—that the Classical period in ancient Greece praised the love that existed between men above any other kind."

"Which was based on a pedagogical relationship, Fujisawa," their professor said, "not sex."

"Is that so?" A victorious smile turned up on side of Fujisawa's mouth. Mitani was telling them a lie—well, a half-truth, in any case—and he wanted to know why. "Well, whatever you call it, it was erotic too. Plato outlines that pretty thoroughly."

"So, your theory is that when the Catholic Church adopted the Classical appreciation of the male form, it also adopted its perversions."

Fujisawa raised an eyebrow. "'Perversion'? I thought Sensei at least would understand how common it is."

"People who were caught engaging in homosexual behavior were punished by the authorities," Izuru said, rising to their professor's defense. "Often with torture or public humiliation. It wasn't something that was treated lightly—like you seem to suggest."

"Maybe if you got caught," said Fujisawa, unable to let his position go. "Or if you didn't have the power of wealth or the Church behind you. What was that line from _Name of the Rose_? Something about not being able to deny the feminine attraction of a young novice? Just like the Buddhist monks with their boy favorites. The clergy reinforces the old worship of the catamite and passes it off as celibacy. That's how they've been able to get away with sodomy for centuries. If nothing can come of it, maybe it isn't really sex."

"I think the topic has passed the point of relevancy—and decency." Mitani said this calmly, but Izuru, who was looking for it, noticed the discomfort in his professor's poise, how hard he was struggling to keep his composure. "Bring it up in philosophy or sociology and you'd have an interesting point for debate."

"But I'm interested to know why it's so prevalent in the history of Christianity," Fujisawa insisted.

"And I'm telling you it has nothing to do with Christian history." Mitani raised his voice. "Just because some members of the religious community have practiced it in the past doesn't change the fact it's a useless behavior denounced by God and by the Church. Now, can we please change the subject?"

His repulsion was instinctual, Izuru knew, a response to the fear he had of being caught laced with the disgust that had been ingrained in him by that religious upbringing he was so quick to mention. He wondered if under it all Mitani did not feel a lingering guilt as well, for indulging in such illicit behavior while condemning it.

Fujisawa, on the other hand, wore his smug smile unabashedly as he sat back and stared at Mitani from under his dark brows. His blatant self-promotion was almost more than Izuru could stand for. None of the others would have put any more stock in what he had said as anything other than the ramblings of an ordinary teenage boy with an ordinary adolescent interest in the shock value of certain perverse subjects. By tomorrow they would have forgotten. But it was clear to Izuru that Fujisawa knew something.

He was flaunting it. He didn't care that his argument held no water, or that for a few minutes he might have made a fool of himself in front of the class. The point he had been trying to make wasn't his point at all.

—

Eventually the bell rang, and the students gathered their things and got up to leave. Izuru stayed behind. Sitting by the window, he looked half asleep as he lazily finished his lecture notes. Preoccupied like this, he did not see the look of suspicion that Fujisawa cast his way as he left the classroom.

Mitani was erasing the board when the last of them had left and Izuru finally stood and took up his books. "I'm off, Sensei," he started.

But Mitani caught the hesitation in his step as the boy reached the door. The way things had changed, the usual noncommittal good-byes of the previous calendar year were no longer sufficient.

"Okazaki."

Izuru shut the classroom door in front of him. "What?"

"Um. . . ." Beneath his fringe of hair, Mitani colored. In the awkward way that had become his habit since the end of the holiday, he said, "Don't forget you have a test on Friday."

As if that was really what weighed so heavily on his mind. "You told us that when the bell rang," Izuru said.

"Oh. Right."

Dreading the uncomfortable silence that would surely have followed, Izuru kissed him instead. It was what Mitani wanted anyway, wasn't it? Mitani caressed his arm and Izuru pressed closer. It felt so good to be in his professor's arms like this, it was no wonder it had become all but impossible to concentrate on lectures when this was all he could think of. He wondered how Mitani carried on so well. Izuru must have allowed his body to get ahead of him just a little too much, because the grip on his arm tightened in order to pry him away. "Are you crazy?" Mitani said gently. "You shouldn't do that here."

"Why not?"

"You know why not. If anyone saw you doing that, I would be fired."

"Saw _me_?" Izuru said.

Mitani sighed. "You know what I mean. _I'm_ the one who's supposed to be responsible. It's not like I can say you came on to me, can I?" He brushed the back of his hand over his forehead and gathered his lecture notes in a show of seriousness, but he did not need to be so blunt. "Look," Mitani tried again more apologetically. "You can come over tonight if you want."

"I don't know. Are you sure that's what you want?" Izuru said. "If you're too busy I wouldn't want to be a distraction."

"No. I mean, yes, of course that's what I want." Mitani sighed again. It felt as though he could not lower his voice enough to safely admit: "More than anything, in fact, I'd like for you to come over."

Izuru smiled. It was not necessary to say he looked forward to it. There was no other thought he could find to occupy him, and perhaps that was the reason Izuru jumped at finding Fujisawa waiting for him on the mezzanine of the stairs.

Surprise crossed his classmate's features momentarily as well before being replaced by a sneer. "You and Sensei must have a lot to talk about," he said. "I didn't know you were so big on Christian history. What was it this time? Medici popes? The trial of Copernicus?"

"Why should you care?"

Izuru made to pass him by, but Fujisawa stepped in the middle of his path.

"I don't. But, now that you mention it, it's kind of unlike you not to just make something up if it really was no big deal. What's going on between you two?"

"I don't know what you mean, Fujisawa."

No one could say Izuru was not skilled at feigning ignorance, but if anyone knew his mannerisms and nuances it was Fujisawa. He glared. "You know what I mean. That was quite a show you two put on, defending the Church and its practices. You can't expect me to believe you of all people, Okazaki, meant what you said. So. You're together, aren't you?"

"That's ridiculous—"

"Is it? I'm willing to bet you're fucking, too. I can tell by the way you two look at each other. It's sickening." Fujisawa snorted. "Jesus. But I guess I can't say I'm surprised, can I? I always knew he was a pervert, the things he talks about—"

"You're mistaken," Izuru said. "Sensei would never do anything of the sort. He's not the kind of person who would just embrace something he considers to be a sin that lightly." Mentally Izuru cringed at his own words. He was such a hypocrite, saying precisely what he detested when it came from Mitani's mouth.

Fujisawa grinned. "Sounds like you have first-hand knowledge. So you'll admit you tried?"

"Yeah, right. Like I said, I know his personality. I'm telling you, it isn't in his capacity."

"We'll see about that."

Izuru started. It was out before he could stop and think about it: "You'd better not do anything—"

"Why not?" Fujisawa shrugged. His long eyes had a hard edge when he turned them to Izuru's again. "If you're not interested in finding out, then I might as well take a shot at it. What is there to lose? Unless, of course, you are interested."

"I care about Sensei's feelings, at least," Izuru said. "He's a human being, Fujisawa, not some trophy. I know you're still bitter about losing the student council presidency, but there's no reason to bring Sensei into it."

Perhaps he expected his accusation to hit a sensitive button. But Fujisawa only laughed and stuck his hands into his pockets. "So the heat is on, huh? I guess we'll find out between the two of us what Sensei's feelings really are."

Izuru clenched his jaw so hard at that it hurt. But what could he say? He felt that if he went too far either way he would expose his and Mitani's relationship—as was the way with secrets, it felt ready to burst from him at the slightest provocation—and give Fujisawa just the fuel he needed against Izuru. And for that, he resented his vice-president even more.

But he wondered as he lay in Mitani's bed—as the thought came to him at the moment of climax, _Sensei is mine_—was he not being just as selfish? Was he not a hypocrite after all? If Fujisawa can play an angel, he thought, then so can I. Though in truth it felt more appropriate to say they were both playing devils.

—

Convinced that Izuru was lying about his involvement with their teacher, Fujisawa schemed to ruin him. But the very thing that Mitani was afraid of deterred Fujisawa as well. He could not report what he suspected to the school administration and squander his own chance at victory.

It was better to go to the source. Like he had that day in class, he dropped deceptively innocent hints to which Mitani seemed oblivious and for which Izuru detested him even more. When Mitani asked him when they were alone about Fujisawa's inflammatory behavior, Izuru knew he had to do something. Until then, he had been content to maintain an indifferent attitude toward his classmate, counting on ignorance and denial to guard his secret. But when an obscure rumor began to circulate among the more observant of the students, he knew from whom they had originated; and even though the rumors themselves gave him a queer sense of satisfaction, Izuru could not allow the perpetrator to get away with impunity.

Izuru might have mentioned to another student within earshot of one of their stricter professors that Fujisawa had more illicit contraband in his possession than cigarettes and pornography. He didn't stop to think he might have gone too far until plainclothes police officers arrived at the school the next day and searched Fujisawa's room. Standing outside in the hall, the subject of everyone's attention and curious whispers, the vice-president was uncharacteristically silent, but the look in his narrow eyes could be described as no less than murderous. Someone would suffer for his humiliation.

"They're saying they got a tip that Fujisawa had marijuana in his room," Izuru overheard Maeda say. The freckled first-year was one of the school's biggest rumor-mongers; but he was oblivious to who had started this one in particular. "They didn't find anything, of course. But I'd hate to be the guy who started that rumor after this."

Fujisawa did not speak to him, but Izuru could read his accusations in the dark looks the vice-president shot him. He felt a slight twang of remorse, but not for the boy he had once thought of as a kind of ally. Where Fujisawa was concerned, Izuru felt only satisfaction, and was only in the back of his mind afraid of retribution. If anyone had any proof of Izuru's movements at night, it was Hinoki. And Fujisawa did not bother to hide the fact that he was conspiring with the dorm chief behind Izuru's back. What promises he must have made Hinoki, Izuru could only guess, and it left the student council president walking a thin line.

By chance an opportunity presented itself.

The assistant librarian, an attractive college-aged woman with thick glasses, was let go without a word to the student body. A little prying on the part of the student council revealed the reason. She had been suspected of doing improper favors for students for a while, but the idea that she had been intimate with members of the student body had not come to light until the head librarian had caught her cozying up to one of them in the back room. He had not been able to make out the face of the perpetrator, but what he had witnessed was enough to confront the young woman; and under emotional stress she confessed to her crime without revealing the boy's identity.

Even barring the dorm chief's reaction to the news, Izuru knew it had been Hinoki seeing her. The bespectacled young man was one of the most flagrant womanizers in the school, refusing to buy into the bisexuality of convenience some of his peers had come to embrace. On top of which, he was not shy about the fact he had no qualms stretching the limitations of his station to include bribery and entrapment.

Never mind that Izuru had used the young woman for his own purposes on an occasion or two, and Fujisawa likewise; the way the two second-years saw it, it was her own fault for preying on repressed high school boys. But Hinoki was distraught—for his own sake. What would happen to him if the school discovered the dorm chief had been abusing his own power in that way?

As much pleasure as he might have gotten watching Hinoki swallow a taste of his own medicine, Izuru decided to confess to the crime himself. And it wasn't a complete lie. "If you doubt I'm telling the truth, you can ask Hinoki," he told a small gathering that included the head librarian and the same senior professors who had turned Fujisawa over to the police.

Izuru knew exactly how to play them, hanging his head in semblance of prayer as he told them, "I knew it wasn't appropriate. But, being surrounded by nothing but boys all the time, I couldn't help myself. I felt like my body was out of control and that I had to satisfy its wants or I would burst." There was a strange irony to confessing these things, as though he weren't talking about the young woman at all, but channeling Mitani's own feelings toward him, and none of the other professors would ever know the difference.

"I'm sorry I ever allowed it to happen," he continued with as much remorse as he thought their credibility could take. He even managed to squeeze out a few tears. "You can suspend me if you think it's necessary. My biggest regret is how disappointed my folks will be when they find out about this."

Of course, he didn't care what his parents thought. Nor did he think they would ever hear of the affair. The mere mention was enough to prompt the faculty to let him go with little more than a slap on the wrist and a "Don't let it happen again." His honesty and show of remorse were satisfactory, they said. To forgive is divine, they said. And even if it were not, he was the president of the student council. What were they going to do?

"Thank you," was all Hinoki said to him when they were alone. There was nothing more that needed to be said. All his gratitude was encapsulated in those two simple words and in the look that passed between them. Hinoki knew better than anyone how Izuru was out most nights, and Fujisawa must have filled in the rest. However, the administration would hear none of it from him after Izuru's false confession. For a while, Fujisawa's scheming died down.

Mitani was less pleased about the matter—what partisan account Izuru gave him of it—than expected. It had nothing to do with the allegation Izuru had been fooling around with the young woman either. It was nothing less than a close call, he said, and what was more: "You lied for us."

For some reason Izuru could not comprehend, that bothered him.

—

Lying on his side on Mitani's bed, flipping through books on the art of Christendom, Izuru was often struck by the large color images that leaped out at him. What was it about Christianity, he wondered at these times, that inspired such morbidity? The Italians and Spanish and Germans all had their own perverse fascinations with the deaths of martyrs. Sebastian, torso riddled with arrows. Lawrence, lowering himself onto a grill. The pain in their faces and half-naked bodies was indistinguishable from the ecstasy, or vice-versa, which in turn was indistinguishable from the peace. Sanitized for sensitive audiences, their blood dripped from their wounds like sap from a maple tree, as though it were something that could be tapped for the faithful masses. Their suffering was almost sexual, if only in the way it was portrayed by an artist's lewd eye.

Those images captured his attention so completely that he didn't tear his eyes away at first when the bed dipped beside him. His pupils were fixated on the vivid brown blood of the stigmata until he felt Mitani's hair tickle his skin and his lips brush against his ear.

Izuru closed his eyes. Those kisses along the side of his face were like a worshiper's. His body's response was immediate.

"That's terrible," he mumbled.

"What is?"

"You kiss me and I get an erection, just like that."

"It's just the physiological response to a specific stimulus," Mitani said quietly against his skin. "The feeling triggers pleasure centers in the brain, which signal the blood vessels to open, making you feel. . . ."

"Hard," Izuru finished for him.

"I was going to say 'warm.'"

Izuru tilted his head, allowing Mitani a wider canvas of neck to paint with his lips. "Maybe you should have been a professor of biology instead."

"Too much work," Mitani replied dryly, to which Izuru smiled. "Not enough passion. Why? Are you not confident enough in my knowledge of Christian history."

The desire in his voice seemed so incongruous with the matter-of-fact things of which he spoke, and Izuru found it too difficult to concentrate on his actual words. He reached down, undoing the buttons of his uniform jacket, his heart quickening its beat in anticipation as he chided Mitani gently, "You know my dozing in class has nothing to do with your teaching style, right?"

Mitani let out a sharp breath against his throat in place of a laugh.

"I don't want anyone else, though," Izuru said so quietly he wondered if Mitani even heard it. Izuru half hoped he hadn't; it was too candid a confession even for him.

He turned onto his back, laying his head at the base of the pillow, and Mitani's hand slipped under his jacket. It curled around his waist as Mitani kissed his mouth, and Izuru arched his back to let the shirt tails be tugged out of his trousers' waistband. Some more practical part of his mind made him reach out a blind hand and close the art book, and push it away from their bodies.

They had both expected that the return to class would make it more difficult for them to spend evenings together. Between their respective workloads and the vigilant eye of the dorm chief, there was plenty to stand between them and the fulfillment of their desires. In hindsight, however, to expect them to slow down was like expecting an addict to give up his vice in one night. In reality, the care they were forced by circumstances to take now only made Izuru more bold and more desperate when they were with one another.

Being slowly stripped of his clothing, Izuru smiled to himself at what seemed to be a preoccupation of Mitani's with his school uniform. It could have been an unconscious fetish, or an act of defilement. An act of rebellion against the school and all it stood for, perhaps. That was how it felt to Izuru, at least. He relished that feeling, clung to it as though it were his lifesaver in the dark waters of the religious and educational establishment. He wanted the world to change to black and white around him, like each one of Father Robert's sermons that only made him feel more and more justified in despising that establishment and its rules, which told him it was wrong to want Mitani like this. If only the wrath of God Himself intervened, Izuru thought, then maybe Mitani would realize what they were and embrace it as Izuru had.

They were heretics forced into this hidden way of life for their self-preservation, and if Mitani doubted things had changed any in the last thousand years, he need only have dropped a hint to a colleague to watch his life collapse around him. Mitani's room was the only place where they could touch that world that was forbidden in safety, if only for a moment, and even the stifled sound of their breathing seemed to acknowledge it. There they were sinners, but at least they were sinners together.

Mitani reached between them, sliding his hand up the inside of Izuru's thigh, tracing his inseam; and Izuru smiled a devilish smile against his teacher's lips. His fingers tangled in Mitani's hair, and as the man pulled away Izuru caught a glimpse of the seriousness in his meek, downcast eyes—so undeserving of Izuru's murmured "Pervert," cut off with a moan as Mitani buried his face in the plane of Izuru's stomach.

The warm breaths Mitani exhaled and the lazy brush of his lips were an incredibly lewd sensation that made Izuru shiver. The muscles under his skin tensed and relaxed like ripples on the water under Mitani's mouth. He was radiating heat like a sun encased in a shell, and it was this natural idol that Mitani felt himself compelled to worship—not instead of God, but not in opposition to Him, who had made it, either. Youth was simply like that. It demanded of the beholder to get down on his knees and praise it. The slight musky scent of sweat that entered Mitani's nostrils as he unbuttoned Izuru's trousers was that scent of the spring of adolescence, the muffled but strong pulse under the skin the beat of that vitality. It was that essence Mitani needed desperately to cling to, as though if he did not, his own youth would fall away like blossoms in a rain shower.

It was selfish of him, but Izuru would have been a hypocrite to begrudge him that. If he knew anything, it was the difference between love and pure, uncomplicated lust; and he could not say that he did not covet every thrust of Mitani's hips just as surely as his professor eagerly devoured each one of his cries of pleasure. Izuru impatiently urged him, "Deeper," "Harder," as though Mitani could possibly do either one. The fingertips digging into Mitani's shoulder as they moved together felt like they would leave bruises, and the way Izuru knit his brows and bit his lip and took the Lord's name in vain in so many ways—like the images of the saints in the book, his rapture lay in a gray area between agony and ecstasy.

Izuru could only stand the friction of Mitani both inside his body and against him for so long. He came violently, and bit Mitani's lower lip simply because it happened to be there, tasting blood. Taking it as a hint, Mitani began to pull out of his embrace, his limbs shaking and breath ragged from being left unsatisfied, but "Don't stop now" Izuru managed between breaths, lifting his hips to draw them back together, and Mitani obeyed, his blood sinking like the Eucharist wine into Izuru's tongue. . . .

"Maybe we should," Mitani said some time later, pausing in the buttoning of his shirt. "Maybe we should stop this."  
It happened at least once a week, usually on the days the whole school attended afternoon mass. It was almost a joke, because they never did. But it worried Izuru each time his teacher became suddenly religious, and caused that same mysterious spark of resentment to flare up within him again.

"Why?" he said at one point. "If it's sin you're worried about, we've already done enough of that for a lifetime. Who will care if we keep doing this forever?" He was only expressing the kind of sentiment pervaded by so many of his peers who had no real thought for the future, but it turned out to be the wrong thing to say.

Rather than respond, Mitani turned away and retrieved his trousers from where they had been discarded on the floor at the end of the bed, as though in doing so Izuru might somehow fail to notice the anguish he only expressed at times like those with every fiber of his being.

He chided Izuru when, a few days later, instead of coming to see him at the usual time that evening, and without any word in advance, Izuru waited until after room check and surprised him with a tap on the balcony window. Mitani jumped when he saw Izuru's dim form standing like a phantom outside in the dark. It was raining lightly, and Izuru's clothes and hair were damp. But what was worse, Mitani wasn't sure how he had climbed his way along the outside of the apartment building without mishap.

"What are you doing?" Mitani hissed at him after the window was shut tight once again. "You're taking an awful risk here, Izuru."

"Don't worry so much," Izuru said without a care. "No one saw me."

"I mean you could have been seriously injured. If you fell, from up here, you could have— Did you ever think about that? Not to mention you're soaked. Are you trying to catch pneumonia?"

Even as he was saying so, Izuru was busy shedding his uniform jacket, splotchy from the rain, and pulling out a chair to hang it over. He just smiled easily at Mitani's concern. "It's no big deal, Sensei. Not when I get to see you like this."

Nevertheless, "You can't stay, no matter how much trouble you went through to get here."

"I thought you would be glad. This way we can be together all night. I'll slip out in the morning before anyone else is awake, before Professor N's wife can even water her roses—"

"This is a bad idea," Mitani groaned.

"Why? I have everything worked out."

"You know why. If anything—just one little thing doesn't go according to your plan and one of the faculty finds out, I'll be fired in an instant. Then what will you do?"

"I'll escape from this place and come see you," Izuru said automatically, so that Mitani sighed. If he hadn't known Izuru so well by now, it would have been almost comical.

"You're not getting my point. I don't want to be fired, Izuru. I don't want to lose my ability to teach. It's my life. And teaching Christian history at Saint Michel was my dream."

"And you're so sure that's going to end? Sensei, what about me? How could I possibly let that happen?"

"Then you have to be more careful than this." Mitani ran a shaky hand through his hair. He wished there were some way to impress upon Izuru the importance of that, but the way the boy rolled his eyes it was like talking to a wall. He knew Izuru didn't want to hear it, but he had to stress again: "We should stop."

Izuru narrowed his eyes. "You always say that."

"Be realistic for a minute, Izuru. In another year you're going to be studying at a university in Tokyo or someplace, and I'll be here and both of us will have forgotten all about this whole thing. It's just a physical curiosity. That's what we both agreed on. An experiment, something to pass the time. Right? It's not like it means anything—"

"But I love you, Sensei!"

Izuru was startled by his own outburst. He did not know where that admission had come from, it seemed so alien to his own ears. The Izuru he knew didn't love anyone. That Izuru only wanted and received.

That was what he had told himself, anyway. That was the belief to which Mitani wanted so desperately to cling.

"No." He shook his head, as though in doing so he could make Izuru's words go away. "No you don't. How can you know what love is?"

"I . . . I didn't think I did," Izuru stuttered. "But I'm telling the truth."

But neither of them could quite believe him.

"Look," he began again after a while, "I don't care if you don't feel the same way. That's not why I started all this. But don't try to tell me now that you can just turn off whatever you do feel that easily. You're as deep in this as I am—"

"Then, if only for that reason, you must see the sense in putting an end to it. For both our sakes."

"No, I don't! Stop meeting in order to protect our meetings? That doesn't make any sense!"

"And if someone found us out and I had to leave, what would you do then?"

"If that happened," Izuru said the only thing he felt sincerely, "I think I would die."

Mitani turned his head. "Don't be melodramatic—"

"I'm not." And he wasn't. Even though he tried to deny whatever feelings had caused him to call this love, this was the one truth he had known with certainty all along. "If I couldn't see you anymore, I would die."

It was an ominous thing to say. Mitani cringed to hear it, but not because of that. He didn't notice the pallor that had come over Izuru's rain-dampened face, but if he had, perhaps he would have regarded the boy with more than just pity. "Izuru. . . ."

Of all the things to think of dying for, he thought, why do you have to choose me? Why, in God's name, would you choose me?

—

"Tsukiori Kira?"

The headmaster repeated the name aloud to himself as he flipped through files. Sitting in the leather-upholstered chair across the desk, the one he had addressed sat still, with a blank expression. "I'm sorry, but I don't remember seeing your name before or meeting with your parents—"

"It was rather short notice," Tsukiori said dryly. "I'm sorry about the trouble, but I had to transfer so suddenly because the move was so sudden. 'Extenuating circumstances' is the term I believe is appropriate. I cleared it up with registration."

"Oh . . . here it is." The expression on the man's face was still quite uncertain as he looked over the file, as if he had not expected to find it actually existed. "Ah, yes, you've been placed in class Two-A. How fortunate for you. Our student council president and vice-president are both in that class."

"The leaders are second-year students?"

"Yes. It is rather unusual, but they do a superb job, and there were—well, extenuating circumstances." He handed Tsukiori a card of stock paper and said, "This is your dorm room number and schedule. I think you'll find your class in Christian history now with Professor Mitani. Maeda volunteered to show you around. He's a first-year but he knows the campus as well as anyone. If there's anything else you need . . ."

"Thank you, sir, but I'll be fine." Tsukiori's departing bow was very short.

Maeda was waiting for Tsukiori outside the office. He was a teenager of looks one might endearingly call expressive: an open, honest face, though not particularly attractive, and a demeanor to match that seemed genuinely interested in Tsukiori as he made small talk along the way. It was the new student's first contact in Saint Michel, and despite Maeda's big mouth, and the loose lips surrounding it, he appeared to be a very trustworthy person. That was the vibe Tsukiori got from him.

Mitani was in the middle of a lecture on the Lutheran Reformation when the door opened and someone stepped halfway through. The lecture came to a sudden stop. In the silence that followed, the other boys sat up to better see who it was who had interrupted. Mitani said hesitantly, "Can I help you?"

"I'm a recent transfer and this is my first day." The voice that answered sounded dull and expressionless, and somewhat high. "Are you Professor Mitani?"

"Yes," Mitani said, a bit uncertainly. Whoever this new student was, it was clear Mitani had not been informed of his arrival. He scratched his head. "Why don't you come in and introduce yourself."

The person in question stepped up before the podium to face the class; and though there was no sound or movement to indicate it, it was nonetheless clear that all eyes were on the new boy, wondering where he came from.

He had an unusually delicate face: a narrow chin; long, dark dark eyes that looked disinterestedly over their heads; a small mouth and a mole under the left eye. His light hair was cut short in the back and left long in the front to fall like drapery against the sides of his face almost to his shoulders. There was a distinctly feminine quality to his body as well, in his high waist and long, slender legs. He made an attractive image to many of them simply because he could easily have been mistaken for a girl.

His manner, on the other hand, was aloof in a refined and masculine sort of way, like the stuck-up sons of ancient households that only seemed to exist these days in television serials. Everything about his person seemed to say that this place was not worth his time. Izuru wondered in passing if he was one of those occult otaku.

"Tsukiori Kira," the boy said shortly. "Seventeen, transferred from Nada High School."

His bow extended only to the neck, and some of the boys stifled laughter at his rudeness. Tsukiori acted as if he did not hear as he remained at the front of the class, hands at his sides, patiently waiting for the teacher to invite him to take a seat. Instead Mitani said uncomfortably, "Is there anything else you'd like us to know about yourself?"

Tsukiori seemed genuinely taken aback by the question. "Eh?"

"For example, what does your family do, what are your interests—"

"I like Christ." The other students did not bother to hide their amusement. "I'm fairly good at fencing," he continued, "and I speak Latin fluently and some Greek. I've won a number of scripture competitions. Also, I think I would someday like to become a cardinal."

The other boys fell into an uneasy silence, but it was most likely in disbelief that these types actually existed in the flesh. "Why not go for broke and aim for pope?" someone next to Izuru snickered to himself.

"That's very impressive," Mitani said. "You . . . you said you were from which high school again? No, never mind," he decided at Tsukiori's sharp look. Since there did not appear to be any questions for the new student, Mitani gestured to the rows of seats and said, "Why don't you take that desk next to Okazaki."

Izuru started. What had he done to deserve this, he wanted to ask his professor, though why this student should be any different from the others he had helped out over the years he did not know. Perhaps it was something in the way Mitani's gaze found Tsukiori every now and then that upset him. It was something in the way Tsukiori looked at Izuru out of the corner of those long eyes that made him feel like his very soul was under close scrutiny—that for once there was someone whose first reaction to him was disgust and suspicion. He avoided returning Tsukiori's gaze and prayed to Mary and the saints that the new boy wouldn't try to talk to him.

"Who does he think he is?"

Some of the boys from the second-year class had gathered to talk about the new student at lunch, where they felt freer to speak their minds without the classroom constraints of politeness and respect. "He's like one of those Gothic types, except without all the makeup."

"Stupid, you don't need makeup to be goth. It's prohibited by the school rules anyway."

"What kind of answer is that: I like Christ? Sounds like a major suck-up if I ever heard one."

"He doesn't look like a Jesus freak. You think maybe he really worships the Devil? 'Cause I'd believe it."

"And 'if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your exorcists cast them out?'"

The boys looked up. "Fujisawa—"

But their vice-president just stared past them. "I don't see what your problem with that guy is," he said, nodding toward Tsukiori, who sat at the end of a table by himself, reading over his food—which sat mostly untouched—headphones in his ears. "That kind is harmless."

"I don't know about that," said one of the others. "I heard about this other school where a guy like him put a curse on another kid and actually made him sick, even put him in the hospital."

"Where do you pick up this garbage?" But Fujisawa was only too glad to take up the challenge. As the others watched in anticipation, he went over and set himself down next to Tsukiori, who calmly took off his headphones.

"Sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier," said Fujisawa, extending a hand. "Fujisawa."

"You're the student council vice-president." Tsukiori ignored the offered hand. "That must be some feat, gaining such a powerful position at your age—from under the asses of tyrants, too, I hear."

Was that sarcasm Fujisawa detected? If it was, he thought he might just take a liking to this kid. "You're damn right it was. Look—" Fujisawa leaned in closer. "Kira . . . That's kind of a girly name, isn't it?"

"I don't think so."

"Just the same, somebody might."

Tsukiori gave him a hard look.

"I just thought I should warn you. It's my job as student council vice-president, after all, to look out for new students."

"Warn me about what?"

Fujisawa shrugged. "Deprived adolescent boys who might get the wrong impression about someone with a pretty face like that. Not that we're that kind of school, but the administrators can't exactly take responsibility for the actions of a few twisted individuals, especially when that kind of thing is so hard to prove in a court of law."

"I appreciate the, er, warning, but I think I can take care of myself." Gathering his belongings and picking up what was left of his lunch, Tsukiori got up and headed toward the exit.

If it was a hint, Fujisawa feigned ignorance and followed. When the doors of the cafeteria closed behind them, and Fujisawa was certain the other second-years would talk even more, he called after the boy: "I don't think you quite grasp the severity of what I'm telling you. You don't think there's any danger in an all boys' Catholic school, but that would be precisely where you're wrong. That kind of behavior is practically institutionalized. You can't even trust the priests these days."

He grabbed Tsukiori's arm, but had not counted on the other boy's reflexes being so fast. He threw Fujisawa off of himself with a strength that belied his delicate frame, the back of his hand narrowly missing Fujisawa's face, and his voice retained its strange calmness as he said, "Then maybe it's I who should be warning you. If you touch me again you can be sure to regret it. Unless you have some urgent desire to feel your body consumed in an unholy pain the likes of which you can't even begin to imagine, I wouldn't recommend it. You can tell your 'twisted individuals' that for me and save us all a lot of trouble."

Fujisawa couldn't help grinning as he watched the newcomer go. Tsukiori was someone he could respect for his gall, even if he inherently hated the type. If only there were some way he could set him against Okazaki.

—

"There's something very wrong here."

That was what Tsukiori Kira repeated in a low voice meant for no one but the speaker. No one else was there to hear it: The room's other occupant was busy elsewhere, leaving Tsukiori to finish unpacking in peace. It was the kind of thing one says to spur a brainstorm—to coax out some conclusion that was slow in forming but could with the right stimulus strike at any moment, like a bolt of lightning. Something that needed to be grasped, but Tsukiori, who had come to Saint Michel for just that purpose, was so far coming up empty.

What was certain were these details. The demon lord Ashtaroth was concerned for the fate of his new Brigade Commander, a human who had defeated Surgatanus after he broke the rules of his own pact. Knowing how prone to jealousy his subjects were, and how resentful of humankind, Ashtaroth had asked a favor of Tsukiori—a devil making a pact with an exorcist—to keep a close eye on those who would be coming for Surgatanus' usurper's life, against their lord's command. It was a vague task, to track down possible perpetrators before they made their moves with no solid information that might indicate when they might strike. Even if there were rogue devils to be apprehended, there was no guarantee someone would not get hurt before Tsukiori could identify them.

But the man they were after was a shinigami assigned to Kyushu. Any rivals would attack there. After months of searching, Tsukiori had finally narrowed a possible target down to this school: Saint Michel's Christian preparatory school for boys. The place sounded perfectly ripe to one in the know for demonic interference: its Gothic spires the closest a fallen angel could come to Heaven, with a plethora of potential god-fearing victims to choose from, if a devil wanted a real tasty challenge. A possession here would constitute a virtual "fuck you" in the face of God.

So now, how to discover the devil's identity, Tsukiori thought, absently fingering an ornate dagger with a starburst guard. That part was easier said than done. For every devil that wanted its identity known, there were a dozen more who would hide it at all costs. Odds favored this one belonging to the latter category. . . .

Nonetheless, the fact remained: Something was wrong here. Out of place. Tsukiori felt that clearly. It was in the air, in the musty buildings. The local animal life knew it. No one was free of suspicion.

Hinoki did knock when he came to the door of the new second-year student's room to introduce himself, but he did not wait for an answer before he pushed open the door. "Room check," he began to say, well aware that it was the wrong time of day. But he stopped himself short.

Tsukiori had turned naturally at the intrusion. He had removed his jacket some time ago, and in the brief moment Hinoki was allowed, the third-year was struck by the queer feeling that something was wrong with this picture. Tsukiori made an androgynous enough boy as it was, and things did sometimes look different in the angled light of a winter afternoon; but Hinoki swore he wasn't mistaken in catching the faint roundness of small breasts under the other's white shirt, and a figure to match that was decidedly un-masculine.

Both parties started. Tsukiori regained his composure first and, shoving the dagger under a pile of clothing, grabbed the jacket from the bed and shrugged it on with haste.

Hinoki could only manage a dumbstruck, "What the hell—"

"Don't you people respect your fellow students' privacy here at all?" Tsukiori snapped at him over a shoulder.

"But you're—"

"What the hell are you doing here, anyway? What's so important you couldn't knock first?"

"I did knock," Hinoki said. "I just came by to introduce myself and inform you of the rules of the dorms. You know, extend some Christian hospitality? I'm Hinoki in Three-B, the dorm chief here."

Mentally, Tsukiori cursed. What luck. . . .

"Hey," Hinoki said in a lower voice. "Are you really the new student in Two-A? You're not shitting me, are you? Or is there some sort of special arrangement no one told me about?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Tsukiori said with a glare, deciding it couldn't hurt too much to play ignorant. How much could the third-year have really seen in one second? He wore glasses, besides, for God's sake, so his eyesight was poor to begin with. "And you needn't have wasted your time. I'm already caught up on the rules."

"Forget that," Hinoki snorted. "I'm talking about you being a girl!"

Tsukiori shot him a look to chill him to the bones.

"Maybe you haven't noticed," the third-year continued sarcastically, "but this is an _all-boys_ school."

"Again. I don't know what you're talking about. As far as I can see, _I'm_ not the one with the problem here."

Hinoki didn't get the hint. He stayed put. "Okay. Whatever you say. A guy with breasts seems awful strange to me, but maybe where you come from—"

"Are you one of those perverts," Tsukiori glared, "that Fujisawa warned me about?"

"Fujisawa?" A disgusted look crossed the dorm chief's features. "First off, I'm not into men, if that's what you're getting at. And _that_ asshole's probably this place's number-one pervert. You know what he's been telling the other guys about you, don't you? The first-years are already terrified you'd put a curse on anyone you think might be more beautiful than you."

Tsukiori smiled at that. "And what makes you think he's making it up?"

"Come on. Some of the younger guys might be that gullible, but when you've heard as much as I have, you tend to develop a pretty good ear for bullshit. So what's yours?"

"Let's see. Once upon a time, there was something that was none of your business. Now get out of my room."

Rather than depart, Hinoki leaned in closer. "Watch who you're talking to. It's my job as dorm chief to butt in on your affairs, no reason necessary. I could make your life here very difficult if I wanted to."

"Sounds like a fun job," Tsukiori said with a tilt of the head. "It seems to come with all sorts of benefits."

"See? Now you're getting it," said Hinoki. "A smart guy like you must understand what could happen if word got around, in an all-boys school, that he wasn't really a guy after all. It'd be pretty hard to keep something like that a secret."

Maybe it would have been only natural for a person with something to hide—as Tsukiori without a doubt did—to be intimidated by a threat as underhanded as Hinoki's. Instead, Tsukiori's refined features lit up at the appearance of a challenge worthy of the new student's calibre.

"Well then, I'll give you some time to think it over," came the response that by all rights should have been Hinoki's.

—

The Chinese New Year, the start of spring on the lunar calendar, fell on a Friday that year, and the class captains had used the opportunity to appeal to the student council to make some sort of affair of it.

"Stick some plum branches in a vase and call it done," Fujisawa said, smiling bitterly for the boy who was taking their pictures for some club project or another.

Ignoring his sarcasm, Izuru said, "The various clubs can use the commons to set up booths. It might be a good time to start recruiting members for next year. And on top of that, we should probably start thinking of Ash Wednesday next week."

"Huh?" Fujisawa sat up and took notice at that. "It's almost Lent already?" He looked somewhat disappointed. "I guess I hadn't been keeping track."

"Has anyone seen Hinoki? He usually at least tells us if he isn't going to show up for a meeting."

"Haven't you heard?" said one of the younger boys, his eyes wide. "He's not dorm chief anymore."

"What do you mean?" said Izuru. Fujisawa turned his attention toward them.

"That new guy, Tsukiori, beat him." It was the freckled first-year, Maeda, who said it. "Tsukiori really did a number on him. You should have seen it!"

Maeda proceeded to tell them how it had gone down, play by play. He had seen the dorm chief confront Tsukiori, who was studying on a bench in the school yard, and guessed Hinoki was just pushing his weight around with the underclassmen as per his usual daily routine. To Maeda's incredible surprise, Tsukiori had almost seemed to smile like the two of them were on friendly terms. They talked for a minute or two, but somewhere things turned sour. That was when the dorm chief reached out to grab him, and Tsukiori went off, and in no time had Hinoki pinned with a bloody nose.

"Most of us are betting he didn't really break Hinoki's nose like Hinoki said he did, but it sure scared the crap out of him at first. For such a slight guy, Tsukiori sure knows how to throw a punch. Some of the other guys thought maybe he put a hex on Hinoki or something. I mean, that guy is ice cold!"

"What, are you in love with him or something?" Fujisawa sneered.

"Not in love _with_. . . ." Maeda blushed. What went unsaid was that by defeating Hinoki, the strange new student was no longer an outsider. It took a moment for the truth to sink in for the remaining student council leaders, and it did not cheer them up any to realize that they would now be seeing a lot more of Tsukiori, much more than either of them ever wanted.

"It's just such a chivalrous thing to do, you know?" Maeda was more or less talking to himself at that point. "That kind of honorable, _mano-y-mano_ stuff you really don't see much of nowadays. Trumping Hinoki in a duel—"

That one word broke the spell.

"Duel?" said Fujisawa.

"So, Tsukiori's the new dorm chief." Izuru's spirits sank. "Is there any chance he doesn't know about the rules?"

"It does count as a duel according to the council rules, doesn't it?" said Maeda. "It looked like Hinoki did challenge him in a way. I can't be sure if it was mutual. I mean, it could have been more self-defense, but—"

"Christ, Maeda, shut up," Fujisawa said, which the first-year quickly did. As the photographer turned away, taking a starry-eyed Maeda with him, the vice-president leaned in toward Izuru. "Well, how bad can it really be? I guess so long as Hinoki is out of the picture, I don't care who's dorm chief."

But even he couldn't manage to say so without an unconvincing growl. Izuru crossed his arms. "I suppose. The way things stand now, the entire student body is under Two-A's control. . . ."

"But you don't like him."

Izuru looked at him. "Don't tell me you do. There's something about that guy that creeps me out. I can't explain it."

"He creeps everyone out. Are you sure it isn't jealousy?"

"What reason would I have to be jealous?"

Both were thinking of Tsukiori's looks, and of Mitani, but neither dared say so out loud. Instead, Izuru said, "You'd just better hope he's not the ambitious type."

"You and me both."

"Excuse me."

They both looked up. Tsukiori had his knuckles poised at the open door. Maeda and his friends turned to him with bated breath. The boy with the camera raised it as if to take a picture, but, word of curses getting around the student body, he couldn't bring himself to do so without an invitation and lowered it again.

The new student's long eyes held a look of superiority his classmates hated instantly as he asked no one in particular, "Is this where the student council meets?"

"Maybe," said Fujisawa. "What's it to you?"

"I'm the dorm chief now, aren't I? I thought I should introduce myself properly if I'm going to be spending a good deal of my time here."

Fujisawa started, but if Izuru was taken aback by Tsukiori's brashness he gave no sign. "That depends. Did you know about the rules of succession for student council members before hand, or are you just taking advantage of them after the fact? Dorm chief is an important position. We can't have anyone just fall into it accidentally. When did you find out about our rules?"

"You mean the clause about duels?" Tsukiori shrugged. "I did some research last night. I wanted to know just what kind of world I was going to be living in for the next year."

Fujisawa snorted at that but held his tongue.

"Fujisawa," Tsukiori said, suddenly turning to the other boy. "I should thank you for you warning yesterday. You were right: Saint Michel is full of all sorts of people eager to take advantage of an innocent newcomer. Frankly, I find it all rather intriguing, the way your hierarchy has been constructed here. It's so Machiavellian it's almost biblical, don't you think?"

Fujisawa's sneer wavered.

Who was this guy, Izuru thought not for the first time, and why the hell did he have to come here, of all places? "Okay, then," he sighed. "We'll get you a record of all the dorm residents. Since you seem so well rehearsed in the student body rules, I'm sure you know what your new responsibilities are already. We shouldn't have to tell you anything. You can get started tonight."

"Hey, maybe you can knock some of that old-time religion you're so keen on into them while you're at it," Fujisawa added with an embarrassing amount of sarcasm.

"Maybe someone should," Tsukiori answered just as coolly, boldly meeting his gaze.

As he watched the sparks fly between his two classmates, Izuru could easily say there was something about that boy who called himself Tsukiori Kira that made him very anxious. He would not have been able to say what it was if one asked him, because the truth was he did not know himself. It was simply a feeling, a gut instinct that told him Tsukiori was dangerous and a threat. More so than the threat some of his underclassmen fancied he was, practicing black arts in dark corners of the school grounds, or speaking to angels.

But what he was a threat to, that Izuru only wished he knew. At the moment, it was simply a feeling he could not explain nor shake, like a cold draft on the back of his neck. It was more than the uncomfortable feeling of being watched—of looking up by chance and seeing Tsukiori staring in his odd, omnipotent way from an upper-storey classroom window, or having that brooding presence beside him each day in class—and he only prayed that if Tsukiori did have any unusual powers like the rumor mill claimed, reading minds was not one of them.

—

It was already late when Izuru awoke. He knew that much without checking the time. It couldn't be helped when they fell asleep after sex, and Izuru ended up rushing back for room check at fifteen or so past ten o'clock; but now that Tsukiori had taken over as dorm chief, he was trying to be more careful. Izuru chided himself mentally for being so sloppy. Groggily opening his eyes, he realized it was a sound like waves that had shaken him from his sleep. It was too loud to ignore, and he wondered when Mitani had opened a window.

When his vision came back into focus, however, it was the slow circulation of shiny black scales that he saw hovering in the darkness before him. The breath on his cheek was hot and humid, and stank of disease and pollution.

Izuru froze in fear. He dared not turn his head and confirm that the presence in the room with him was real—that the creature of his nightmares had returned—but against his will he found the wide glowing eyes staring at him. It felt as though they were boring right through his skull, and even if he were not so terrified and could close his eyes, he would find them peering back at him from behind his eyelids. Like the facets of a diamond, every surface seemed to reflect that terrible visage, and Izuru was all too aware that even his own thoughts were not safe from that creature's all-seeing gaze. _I-zu-ru . . ._ it whispered his name, coaxing him to turn and look at it.

"Stop it," he said through gritted teeth. "Go away."

"_Izuru. . . ._" Each syllable was agony for the thing to speak. "_Why do you ignore me?_"

"Leave me alone!"

In response, a low murmur issued from the creature, like the two-fold rumble and hiss of a strong wind through the branches of trees, filling his ears with nothing else but that sound. Fragments of words coalesced slowly from that murmuring hush, as alien as a Buddhist chant but infinitely more powerful. Izuru could not understand what they meant, yet he knew they were sinful, that they were blasphemy. They were words of judgment reserved for the aeons that mortal beings such as he were never meant to hear.

He lashed out, desperate to push the devil away from him; but instead of the hard, scaled body he expected to hit, his hands touched nothing but air. Surprised, he looked, and immediately wished he had not. His hands had sunk into the flesh of the creature's throat, encountering no resistance, but when he pulled them away, they were covered with a sticky black ichor. His breath caught in his throat. Panicking, anxious to escape, to demolish that diabolical image, he pushed harder against it. His arm sank in up to the elbow. More of that awful substance, like tar and viscera, gushed from its wound, clinging to his skin, absorbing into him. Severed veins encircled his arm, searching for a hold, drawing him inward as though they would consume him whole. He tried his utmost to pull free, but his other hand only peeled away pieces of the creature's flesh, which slipped off like slabs of clay mud.

Izuru felt he was going to be sick. There were no sweet-scented apricots here, no lilacs; the stench of death and decay overwhelmed everything else. Black, oily blood rolled in rivulets down the creature's scales, from its torn fins, out of the tiny holes of its ears and nostrils. It oozed from its phallic fish-tongue to fill and overflow the cavity of the jaw, dripping down onto Izuru's bare stomach. For the second time he could remember, a genuine fear of pain and death gripped him. He squirmed to get away, only to feel the monster's coils burst behind him under his weight, and the quagmire of its innards surge up to ensnare him.

He looked around wildly. Mitani was gone, as was the bed and everything else that had been in his room. Nothing existed but the darkness and the ichor—and the creature who bled it. Izuru tried to yell, but no sound would leave his constricted throat. Nor could he find any words with which to defend himself. It was as if he were being drowned, choked, his lungs unable to expand and epiglottis stuck, though nothing restricted him.

Nothing but the look in the creature's eyes that frightened him to his soul. It was a wild look, a desperation more animal than even that which he felt himself to escape—the complete irrational bloodlust of a thing hungry and dying. He watched with horror as the creature's gaze followed the black trail of blood and saliva it had left down the length of Izuru's body. There was nothing else he could do but watch as it lowered its head and dislocated its jaw with a sickening pop. Its needle-like teeth sank deep and greedily into Izuru's side, and he couldn't cry out. The pain was too incredible to bear—

And then he opened his eyes.

The room—Mitani's room—slowly came back into focus. Izuru's heart was beating painfully fast, so much so he thought it might burst from the pressure. The sound of his own blood pumping in his ears echoed like a booming subwoofer in his head. He was almost too afraid to look, but when he did, was relieved and mystified to find Mitani was still beside him, sleeping soundly on his stomach. Though Izuru could still feel where the creature's teeth had penetrated his body, he remained whole and unmarred except by the signs of that evening's pleasure and a faint redness that, for all he knew, could have been caused by anything. For all appearances, the horror that had felt so real only moments ago had been only a dream.

But that knowledge did nothing to console Izuru. He shot out of bed and hurried to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. He splashed cold water on his face, but he remained reluctant to look up and meet his own reflection in the mirror in case he should see something there besides his own reflection.

"It was just a dream," he told himself between shaking breaths. "It isn't real. It can't be." But he had dreamed of the same creature twice now, and the same voice calling his name so seductively. And both times it had seemed more real than this did now.

_Izuru, listen to me!_

"No!" he cried, and clasped his hands over his ears as he backed up against the wall. He wanted so much to block out the voice, to convince himself it was a hallucination, but it was no use. It was coming from inside, in his own voice, as though they were his own thoughts. Except that he had no control over them. He could not will or rationalize them away.

_Why do you ignore me?_ it asked him as it had in the dream. _Why do you continue to deny me? I thought we were kindred spirits, you and I. I gave you what you wanted, did I not? And this is how you repay me, you arrogant, selfish boy, by denying my existence? You ungrateful—_

"Go away, go away!" Izuru whispered. He lowered himself to the bathroom floor.

_I cannot—I will not go away. I am a part of you now, Izuru. Yours is the only body I have. Do you not remember? We had a deal—_

You're wrong, he thought. I wouldn't make a deal with a thing like that.

But the devil-Izuru chuckled. _You did, though perhaps you do not remember it. What do you say? Shall I refresh your memory?_

Afraid of what that might entail, Izuru pressed the heels of his palms to his temples. "Then I take it back." He wanted so much for this to be a dream. "I'm not the same person I was when you found me." But inside his own mind he could sense the devil's doubt. "I got this far by myself and by my own efforts. I became student council leader with no help from you. I don't need you."

_Are you certain about that? Are you willing to chance it? Shall I take back our little agreement right now, so you can see for yourself whether Sensei's affections remain without me? Would you like to find out if he will still want you after I open his eyes completely to the sin he has committed? It is quite a gamble you're taking, Izuru, but by all means, let us see if it's really of his own free will he allows himself to be loved by you. I can do that much for you, if you think it will allay your doubts—_

No! Izuru's heart cried out, and a very real fear gripped him: fear that maybe he was wrong and the voice right, that Mitani's feelings for him were no more than a delusion, a spell his professor was under. Fear of being rejected in totality by the one person who seemed to truly care about him, and the only person he had ever cared about himself. Only now did he realize he had dug himself a hole too deep to climb back out of. Maybe he was right, and the devil had nothing to do with Mitani's wanting him—but did he want to know the truth of the matter only after Mitani was gone? Izuru would never be able to stand that. If he lost Mitani . . . "I wouldn't want to live if that happened."

_I knew you would see sense,_ said the devil. _After all, I coveted you above all others because you were an intelligent young man._

"Why are you doing this to me?" Izuru whispered, his fingers tangled in his hair so hard the roots ached.

_You are forgetting who put you here. You're forgetting your servant._ The devil paused for a moment as though in indecision, then said more bitterly than before, all but spitting out the name: _That Tsukiori Kira makes me nervous. Feels familiar somehow. We shall have to keep an eye on him._

"Why?"

But the devil would say nothing more, leaving Izuru utterly alone with his unanswered questions. My servant, he thought—more like a master to whom he was a slave. But in the back of his mind Izuru knew he would gradually forget this too, just as he had all but forgotten their first encounter. How was he supposed to remember what to do if the memory of their pact faded from his mind? Would he lose Mitani because of something he could not control? Getting to his feet and looking in the mirror, Izuru was almost surprised to see his reflection staring back unchanged. It could have all been his imagination, he thought, but. . . .

_But._

When he came out of the bathroom, the creak of the door in its jamb made Mitani stir. He opened his eyes groggily as Izuru began to pick his clothes up from the floor. "Izuru . . . what are you doing?"

"I have to get back to my room," Izuru said. He tugged on his shirt. "It's late. I think I overslept."

As he sat up and yawned, Mitani glanced at the digital clock. "It's only eight thirty-seven."  
Izuru started. That meant he had only been out ten, fifteen minutes at the most. Yet it had seemed so much longer. It had felt like a lifetime.

"You still have more than an hour before curfew." Coming up behind him, Mitani placed his hands on Izuru's waist, burying his nose and lips in the meeting of Izuru's shoulder and neck. He felt heavy. "You can stay a little while longer. Come shower with me?" he murmured lustfully.

Izuru still remembered the warmth he had felt in his gut, creeping into the shower the other night and surprising Mitani—the smile that had appeared on his professor's lips then as the water dripped into his eyes. Strange how even that could not banish his sudden disgust. This behavior was not like Mitani. It was not his professor talking to him like this. It was a point being proven.

Izuru pulled away, perhaps a bit too abruptly. "No, I have to leave now," he said, and continued to dress himself with haste. He just hoped Mitani did not notice the slight waver in his voice as he said so. The last thing Izuru wanted was to have to explain himself and make the dream real all over again. "I just remembered I have some homework I need to finish before tomorrow."

"All right." Mitani hesitated before saying, not without sounding a bit hurt, "I guess I'll see you in class, then."

On a whim Izuru stopped by the library before heading back to the dorm. Avoiding the glances of classmates who were studying before bed, he checked out a book on psychology. Even as his shaking fingers trailed over the spines of the books on the shelf he was reluctant to pull any one out, in the end only driven to do so by a sense of great urgency. He had to know whether something was wrong with him. Schizophrenia? Some kind of personality disorder? There were stories of people with brain tumors affecting their dreams and behavior, even producing hallucinations of demons. It had to be something like that.

Whatever it was, he was afraid to take his problem to the school's nurse, and it wasn't like there was anyone else he could trust to take him seriously. Mitani would turn him away for good if he knew, if he didn't try to help Izuru himself. No, Izuru felt sick at the mere thought.

—

The rules that govern student alliances are so tacit and transient, based on nothing and everything, and changing with the wind. Thus, no one could say for sure, but it seemed that power had shifted within the student body once again. The prince of class 2-A, it seemed, the Father of the profane trinity that was the Saint Michel student council, had lost his crown, and it was Fujisawa to whom the boys looked with awe now, from whom a word was enough to damn or save a fellow student. How was it that Okazaki Izuru could have lost his once unshakable hold? Where was the confidence which the professors still naively believed pulled the strings that kept the boys in moral order if not in the combined cunning and unflinching laying down of the law by his vice-president and dorm chief?

Consequently, as the days passed, the tension in class 2-A seemed to be building to some sort of head. Again, if asked, no one would have been able to say why it seemed that way. It just did.

Things had taken an interesting turn since Tsukiori usurped Hinoki. It was the dorm chief's job to see and hear everything, down to the curl of cigarette smoke in the washrooms and the buzz of wasp wings in the eaves—to deal out punishment for breaking the rules and accept bribes for looking the other way. In that way, Tsukiori fulfilled his position no different than anyone else would. And yet there was something different about him. Perhaps it was the way he drifted about the dorms with a dark humor, distant from students and faculty alike—the way he seemed to be on a different plane mentally, or how he extolled warnings to offenders without appearing to care in the least that was downright creepy. His silent, unreadable gaze was everywhere and saw everything, making it difficult for anyone, including Izuru and Fujisawa, to continue to keep their secret goings-on secret. Yet somehow they did. At least, so they thought.

Fujisawa must have been plotting something. That was what Izuru came to suspect once again. By turns the bitter glances and knowing smiles were turned in one of his fellow officers' direction, then the other. Fujisawa would lean over across the aisle and whisper something to a student he had rarely deigned to speak to in the past, or sit down at the first-year table where the boys who participated in various team sports would coagulate, looking out of the corner of his eye at Izuru as he spoke to them in good spirits. The confidence with which he now leaned back in his seat or held himself when he stood to leave was, if it were possible, even more annoying than ever before.

Of course, it was impossible not to hear the rumors. Nor was it difficult to deduce who had been encouraging them. The student council officers were after a bigger prize than power over the school, the student body said. They were after a particular person. Some said a man. And some simply laughed and professed not to believe a word of it. Others, first- and third-years in the know, thought a competition like that was precisely in Okazaki and Fujisawa's natures, and wondered about Tsukiori's more feminine qualities. But who could say how deeply they really took anything on faith.

Despite this, day by day Izuru retreated further into himself. Funny how a year ago he would have loved to have had such things said about him. He would have been quite amused by it. Even a few months ago he would have jumped at the opportunity to have a _real_ contest of this caliber between himself and Fujisawa. Now all he could do was deny the rumors and treat them as though they warranted no serious consideration whatsoever—and simply hope they grew stale and went away. He could not erase the idea from everyone's mind now that it was implanted, but he could do his utmost to pretend there was no truth to the rumor whatsoever, and hope Mitani did the same.

It must be paranoia, he told himself, an honest-to-God anxiety disorder, this spell he had fallen under of late, and he willed himself to forget the whole matter. Forget the possibility he might lose Mitani, or be beaten by Fujisawa and that anti-social Tsukiori. Forget the possibility of going back to being a nonentity, not even class captain. . . . It was useless. Slowly he felt himself being driven out of his head. He couldn't concentrate on a single lecture, and with exams approaching, it was bound to show. Like a hopeless addict, he could do nothing anymore but hang on until such time as he could be with Mitani again, and forget about everything that was unpleasant or bothersome in his world. . . .

Izuru winced as a sharp pain stabbed the palm of his left hand. He glanced down. A dark red bead of blood was growing slowly in the center of his palm from where he had inadvertently stabbed it with the point of the paper clip he had been playing with. When had he picked that up, he wondered. For that matter, how long had he had it there in his hands, unfolding it and digging it into his skin? Red welts showed where he had dragged the sharp point over his flesh, but until it broke the surface he had not been aware of what he was doing in the slightest.

He flexed his hand, watching with fascination as the bit of blood expanded and then spilled itself out into a crease in the skin. It was more fascinating than his professor's dry lecture on Meiji literature, this tiny self-made stigmata, the way it shone. Like a fleck of garnet in rock, neither red nor black. It hadn't hurt either, beyond that first tiny prick. Not really.

It made Mitani pause while he was trailing his lips along the underside of Izuru's wrist. His mouth was a thin line as he clenched his jaw tight, prompting Izuru to ask what he was looking at.

"How did that happen?" Mitani asked him.

"How did what happen, Sensei?"

"These cuts on your arm. Did you run into something?"

At the furrow in Izuru's brow, he turned the boy's wrist to him manually, and Izuru saw what he was talking about. It was difficult to make out in the dark, but just as Mitani had said, there were red cuts on the inside of his arm, the skin around them still freshly raised and pink. He had no idea how they got there, but saw the worry that had come over his professor's face and had to exorcise it.

"Yeah, ah," he began, "I scraped it on the gym door. The latch is sharp, you know, if you hit it at the right angle. They really should do something about that."

Mitani said nothing more on the subject, though every now and then Izuru caught him staring at some bruise or other that he had no explanation for himself.

—

"Let us pray."

As one, the students and faculty members gathered in the chapel bowed their heads at Father Robert's words, and prayed silently where they stood. Perhaps there were some boys among them who were otherwise religious who wondered if they were alone in using the time to think of other things; and perhaps there were some who hardly took anything seriously whose minds were seriously focused on their wishes reaching God. After a short time, Robert said, "Amen," and they echoed it, making the sign of the cross and sitting.

At that time, one of the professors rose from the front row and went to the podium. "A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans," he began, then recited:

"For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, nothing good dwells. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice."

Recognizing the passage, Mitani was startled where he sat. He knew that chapter particularly well, had repeated it so many times himself in the past—and had had it repeated around him, filling his ears like the hush of the invisible waves that seemed to rock the person who murmured it, their knuckles white on their clasped hands.

And Mitani could not deny that it was a passage that had sprung unwittingly to the fore of his mind several times in the last month. It gave him some strange comfort knowing that he was not alone in his shame, and that it had been common even in the distant past, nearly two thousand years ago. But who else could have known what that passage meant to Mitani? How could someone have read his mind, known just what book and what chapter tortured him so? His thoughts went to Izuru, although he was hard pressed to believe the boy could have confessed what went on between the two of them to anyone, let alone another teacher or the priest.

He looked up, and saw Father Robert watching those gathered in the pews from his chair like a hawk scanning the ground for prey. For a brief moment, his gaze snapped straight to Mitani, and the young teacher felt a panic rising in his chest. Did the priest know? Had he chosen that reading in particular as his way of confronting Mitani? It was an unusual choice of reading for weekday mass, even if this was the Lenten season. . . .

"You don't look well, Professor."

Father Robert had approached him with those words just a short time ago, when Mitani had come to pray for forgiveness. There was a chilly undertone to the priest's manner Mitani did not remember being there before. Perhaps, he thought, the priest had begun to find it bothersome how often he came to the chapel. How long could Mitani stretch out this lie about coming to look at the stained glass windows before he stretched it too thin?

"Don't I?" Mitani had faked ignorance. "I feel fine."

Perhaps the suspicion in Father Robert's eyes was only his imagination. "You look as though you've lost some weight. You look more tired than usual."

"Really?" Mitani had flashed him a bashful smile. "Well, you know, it is that time of year again! We've been running around like chickens with their heads cut off with all this preparation for the exams, and I've got an evaluation coming up after the term is over, so I guess the stress must be catching up with me."

"Maybe that's it." But Father Robert still looked unconvinced. "Are you sure your health has been fine? Because if it hasn't, you should be upfront about it and ask to take a break, before it gets any worse. Get your physical early to be on the safe side. We all know how hard you've worked for these boys."  
Mitani's forced smile had dropped then. If the priest only knew. . . .

"Is there something you would like to get off your chest? I haven't seen you in Confession for a while," the priest said. And his tone did sound gentle and full of concern. Only Mitani knew how quickly that would prove to be superficial if he were to learn the truth.

"Do you mind? I'd rather not, Father. It's too personal."

"It's your decision to make, but I won't judge you if you change your mind." That, Mitani thought, was a lie. As if reading his mind, Robert dropped his voice and leaned closer. "Is it your dreams from before? Are you still having them?"

"No," Mitani found himself saying. "No, those have gone away."

He swallowed hard, feeling as though his tongue were retreating back into his throat. His mouth refused to say what had replaced them, while his conscience reassured him he was telling the truth, if only half of it.

"'For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self,'" the professor went on, "'but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

"'Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!' The word of the Lord."

"Thanks be to God," the students and faculty said together. Caught off guard, Mitani's response stumbled after theirs. _So then_, he finished in his head, _with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin._

Yes. That was precisely how it was.

He found his attention fading during the homily. Father Robert inevitably found a way to pull the Pauline reading into the spirit of Lent, saying that it had the same essential theme as Jesus's forty-day fast in the desert. He urged them to remember Paul's warning, especially now that the end of the school year was little more than a month away. As the Lord had abstained from material pleasures, so should they. For both spiritual and practical reasons: They had exams at the end of the term and could not afford to be decadent. In his sermon, the two were connected, the spiritual well-being and the academic well-being. Ultimately, they were tied to the physical well-being as well. It was a golden triangle that could not be complete without the putting aside of unnecessary pleasures that only led to distraction.

This was how Father Robert justified the selection from Romans. Coughs shook his body from time to time and made him pause in his speech, symptoms of a flu that had been going around and by which he had been hit particularly hard. But the flu did nothing to round the edges of a homily intended to shame the boys into piety.

To Mitani, they were sharp as ever. When the others stood to receive the Eucharist, he remained seated, feeling himself unworthy of receiving it, and not just because he had been skipping Confession.

Unnoticed by any of the other professors, Izuru passed by him on his way to the exit. When he saw that Mitani was abstaining from Communion as well, as though they were sharing a secret, he smiled when he met his professor's eyes, guaranteeing they would follow his back out the chapel doors into the bright sunlight.

—

Izuru kissed him that evening as though making up for what he had missed in mass—hungrily, drinking in each of Mitani's sighs like they were a thing he needed for living, for salvation. Mitani arched his back against the sofa's cushions, constrained by the back of the davenport and by Izuru's weight on top of him, which gave him no choice but to lose himself in the sensation, to be driven by Izuru's pure need and the gentle rolling of his hips.

And making him that much more a slave to his flesh.

Once that thought entered his consciousness, it only acted as a catalyst. Mitani's thoughts returned to Father Robert's warning that morning, and the priest's words would not let go once they sank their teeth into him.

Against his body's will, which wanted very much to follow this pleasure to its natural end, Mitani went still.

Izuru pulled back. "Something wrong?"

"It's nothing. Forget it."

At the boy's skeptical look, Mitani encouraged him, "Don't stop," and Izuru closed his eyes and leaned forward again. For a moment, under Izuru's heavy breathing and the soft lips that teased his ear, Mitani believed he could just slip back into that warm escape Izuru offered in his body. But it didn't work out that way.

Mitani turned his head, swearing softly. This time, when he stopped, so did Izuru.

"I'm sorry. I can't do this right now."

"I guess it happens." Izuru moved to get up. "Maybe later, then—"

He started when Mitani grabbed his wrist. The hair had fallen out of his professor's eyes, but he could not quite meet Izuru's as he said, "Actually I . . . I need to ask you something. Did you . . . tell anyone about this?"

Izuru's first reaction was to be outraged that Mitani would accuse him of breaking his trust. But then he smiled. It seemed he could not prevent his teacher from hearing the rumors after all. "No," he said. "Because what you said was right, about what would happen if anyone found out, and I couldn't let that happen."

He should have left it at that, but he went on: "You should just ignore what the other guys are saying. Wherever those rumors got started, they don't know anything, and most of them think the whole thing is just a joke."

"What rumors?"

Izuru's smile fell. "You haven't heard them."

"I was talking about Father Robert. I wondered if you had confessed to him."

"Of course not."

Mitani pushed himself up. "What are these rumors saying—"

"I told you not to think about it. And for that matter, Sensei, you've been spending a lot of time in the chapel—"

"Asking God's forgiveness for what we've been doing!"

"Have _you_ confessed?"

Mitani sobered then. "No," he said. "I thought about confessing, but in the end I could never bring myself to actually do it. I only asked," he added in a louder voice as Izuru rose from the couch, "because of that reading today. Didn't it strike you as a little too appropriate? Like it was meant for us in particular."

Shrugging on his shirt, Izuru was silent in thought.

"What if he knows about us?" Mitani insisted, sitting up. "I feel like I have it written across my forehead or something, what we've done, this guilt just keeps piling and piling up. At least if one of us had confessed, he would be bound by his oath to secrecy, but—"

"He doesn't have any proof."

"That's not the point."

Mitani lay back down, and when he spoke again it might as well have been to himself. "Those words just keep coming back to me: The flesh sins, and there is nothing good in it, and it does what I do not want to do. But I am doing what I want to do, and at the same time not. And that doesn't make any sense."

He groaned, draping his arm over his eyes.

"Ever since I was a child, they told me it was against the natural order of things for men to lie with one another, that it disgusted God who made everything so that it might create new life. And I believed that. It was easy to believe that for so long, without question. Now . . . Now all I can feel in my heart is how natural this feels, and it tortures me. Could it be I no longer know what it is to sin? How else can it be that I keep wanting to commit this act, night after night, when I know how wrong it is? What have I become that I can't help myself—that just thinking about doing those things . . ."

Just thinking about those wonderful things and his body reacted with longing for Izuru like he could not bear.

From behind the sofa, Izuru stared blankly down at his professor, whose face was hidden behind his arm. He did not begrudge Mitani his remorse, but nor could he pity him for it either. Izuru simply wearied of this guilt, wearied of it so much it made him sick, and now, something whispered in his brain, now was the time to do something about it. He went to the kitchenette.

Hearing the stove knob click, Mitani must have guessed he was merely putting the kettle on. He did not look up. Izuru opened the drawer looking for a spoon, when his eyes fell unexpectedly on the metal tongs inside instead. He pulled them out without really being sure why. Turning them over before the burner's flame, watching as if in a trance how the light reflected off the cold steel, he said after a time, "Are you blaming me, Sensei, or asking me for forgiveness?"

"I'm not blaming you for my own weaknesses," came the muffled reply.

"Then are you asking me for benediction?"

Mitani lowered his arm and laughed lightly. "What?" Since when did Izuru talk like that?

"Did I say something wrong?"

"No, it's just . . ." Mitani let out a sigh. "Well, I wonder. Could I even do that? Not that I would be asking the wrong person, but . . . I wonder if anything, any amount of penance, could ever absolve me of what I've done already."

"You're right," Izuru said. "I can't do that. But if I received the punishment for our actions in my own flesh, and mine alone, would that make you happy? If I were to flog myself for you, for example, would that be enough to make you love me, Sensei—unconditionally? Guiltlessly?"

"Don't talk like that," Mitani said. He forced an awkward laugh, but Izuru's words suddenly made him very uncomfortable, and not just because to him they sounded like hubris and sacrilege. Those were the words of the saints at their trials, of heretics; he didn't want to hear them from Izuru. "Don't say things like that if there's no way you can mean it."

"Why can't I?" Izuru's soft voice rose with an otherworldly, dreamy conviction. "Ever since I first pushed you, you've held back, out of guilt. For whom? Not for me, surely. I don't want you to feel guilty, Sensei, I never did. I want you to want me with your whole body, like you do when you're inside me and I can see your mind isn't on anything else but being there, in that moment, with me. I like that. I want you to keep loving me like that."

He stared at the tips of the tongs as he held them in the flame of the gas burner, fascinated with the way the fire licked them without changing their color. A sad smile pulled at his lips.

"But maybe that's too much for me to expect, as long as you continue to blame yourself for what we've done. So blame me. I'm the one who started this. It was my desire that caused you to sin against God. Therefore, let the sins of your flesh be absolved in me, and do with me as you please."

With those words, he pressed the tongs to his genitals. The metal felt only cold at first, like it had bathed in ice instead of an open flame. Then, all in a rush, it burned. Surprised by it, not knowing just how it would feel, Izuru gasped and grabbed the counter with his free hand, steadying his knees. Never could he remember pain like this before—searing, excruciating pain, yet somehow not half of what he knew he deserved. With a cruel sense of satisfaction, he endured it until the tongs had branded the flesh, then he moved them lower still. The shock had worn off, but the heat seemed to go right through him, straight through to lodge in the center of his back where it burned like a raging fire. . . .

"What are you doing?" Izuru looked up in time to see the horror on Mitani's face before he rushed to Izuru's side and grabbed the tongs from his hands. Burning himself, he threw them into the sink with a curse, and turned off the stove. "What in God's name's gotten into you!"

"I thought I just said." Izuru wrung the tails of his shirt in his pain, but somehow his voice remained steady and he even chuckled. "You told us once how complacent our faith has become, how unappreciative people are of sacrifice these days. But you of all people understand, don't you, Sensei? The martyrs you admire. . . . Their trials and sacrifices. . . . That's why I want to do this for you—"

"Don't say that, Izuru, don't even say it! No one is on trial here. Put some ice on the burn before it gets any worse."

With shaking hands, Mitani grabbed a towel that lay on the counter and began to run it under cold water.

While his eyes were turned, Izuru searched through the kitchen knives for one that would suit his purpose and tested its sharpness on the tip of his thumb. It was not enough, what he had done. It was a start, but that small act of atonement alone was not enough to make up for all their trespasses. Eventually, Izuru thought, Mitani would have to see that. Eventually his professor would thank him.

He splayed his hand on the cutting board, putting the knife's tip to the wood and positioning the back end of the blade over the base of his last two fingers. In one swift move so he would not have the time to regret it, he pressed down hard with all his weight. Blood welled up instantly and poured from where the digits had been severed. The flow of it out of his body was all Izuru felt besides the initial sting, and the feeling made him strangely giddy. "Sorry about the mess," he said.

Turning at those words, Mitani was too shocked by what he saw to do anything but watch as Izuru repeated the mutilation to his other hand, grunting when it did not go as cleanly as the first time. The scene unfolding before him did not feel real. It was like a bad dream, something impossible.

"My God." He gasped, his eyes refusing to tear themselves away from the severed fingers that rolled to a stop and lay so wrongly on the counter like little carrots—and the blood on the cutting board and on Izuru's hands, running in rivulets down into his shirt sleeves, over the handle of the knife he still gripped with one mangled hand. "Jesus. . . . Izuru, how could you do this? What made you even think— We need to get you to the nurse."

"You want the nurse to know about us, now?" Izuru teased. "Sensei, this isn't like you!"

No, Mitani thought, it's you this isn't like. But could he really say for certain Izuru had never had this potential in him all along?

Mitani did not look up to see the amused look on his face. He grabbed Izuru's hand, and the knife fell limply from it to the floor. "If we got you to a hospital right away, they could still reattach your fingers. Ahh—" He grimaced when he wrapped the wet towel around Izuru's hand and, pressing on the wounds, felt the stub of bone underneath. Izuru did not complain. The blood slowly soaked up through the fibers, dyeing them pink, then crimson, and Mitani felt sick to his stomach seeing it. "You're bleeding all over the place."

Izuru just laughed. "It doesn't hurt, Sensei. Really."

"Don't talk like that. You're scaring me."

"I don't want them reattached. This is a small price to pay for the sins we've committed together. Besides, it feels good."  
Ignoring Mitani's attempts to help him, Izuru bent down to retrieve the knife.

"Izuru, stop and listen to me," Mitani pleaded, grabbing onto him desperately, shaking him, hoping anything would make him see sense. "This has gone far enough, all right? Much, much too far. You've proven your point, so stop being ridiculous! Don't you realize what you're doing to yourself? What will your parents think when they find out about this—when they see you missing your fingers?"

"You think I honestly care? Those people mean nothing to me."

"What about me, then?" Mitani tried. His voice and his limbs trembled in desperation, but he had to keep trying. "Why do you think this is going to make me love you any more? How could I think of making love to you after this, Izuru—Izuru, I'm afraid for you like this, let me help you!"

He was unable to say anything more because that was when Izuru leaned forward heavily, and it threw Mitani off balance. He fell hard on his backside on the kitchen floor, the breath knocked out of his lungs and Izuru climbing over him. The blade of the knife rang as it scraped across the floor.

"You don't even mean what you say yourself," Izuru said. His voice was low, his eyes that followed Mitani's lips clouded with lust even now, after everything he had done to himself. "You used to say all the time how wrong it felt, but it never stopped you before. You never could conquer who you really are. Even now, you can't help it, can you?"

His breath was hot against Mitani's lips, his throat, carrying with it a cloying, sickening sweetness, like fragrant flowers cut and stagnating indoors. "You want me even when I'm like this." He smiled like an angel and shook his head. "You're hopeless."

It was true. Mitani wanted so badly to deny it, but, God, it was true. His erection was returning; he couldn't hide that from Izuru in his naked state, or that his breathing was hardened as much from excitement as horror. Mitani wasn't a sadist—at least he would never admit it: It wasn't because of the blood.

But hadn't the blood of martyrs always fascinated him? The stories of their tortures? The paintings in museums of foes locked in mortal combat—could he honestly deny that it was the detail given to the wounds that had captured his attention so thoroughly as a child?

No. This was different, Mitani told himself. But the fact was he no longer knew what to believe.

Izuru raised his knee to his chin in order to chop the two outermost toes off of each foot. His face no longer showed any emotion as he did it. It was simply something he had to finish, to even out the balance.

Mitani tried ineffectually to stop him, but Izuru just lowered himself over his professor, making them join roughly without any concern for his own body. "Don't you think it enhances the experience?" he breathed against Mitani's mouth while they rocked together.

"Izuru. . . ." Mitani could only whimper his name, wondering even as he said it how this could be that same person. He searched desperately for words of protest, but his throat clamped up and his mind failed him. His fingertips pressed harder into Izuru's hips with each thrust with the intent to stop him, but he found himself somehow unable to do even that. Though he could not understand it, nor could he willfully tear himself away from Izuru, even while the boy's blood stained the floor around them. Mitani saw it even when he closed his eyes. This wasn't what he wanted at all.

After a while Izuru stopped and sighed in frustration. "Why isn't it working right?" he murmured, but the burns he had inflicted on himself wielded more power over his physiology than his lust. He groaned. "I guess this is what I get. Ironic, though. . . ."

"You need medical attention." Mitani tried to squirm out from under him. "After what you did, it's going to be a long time before you'll be back to normal—"

"Please don't lecture me, Sensei."

"I'm telling you, Izuru," Mitani sobbed. "This isn't what I wanted."

"No. . . . I guess you're right. . . ."

Izuru picked up the knife again, and for a brief moment Mitani wondered if the boy was planning to kill him. Strange, but the thought did not bother him as much as it would have a day ago, or even an hour. After all he had done to cause this, and what little he had done to put an end to it when he knew that would have been the proper course of action, would he have had the right anymore to blame Izuru?

Instead, Izuru pushed up his sleeve, exposing the inside of his own left arm, and opened it down to the wrist with deep, criss-crossing lines and angles. Sweat glistened on his pale forehead, but his eyelashes fluttered in silent pleasure as he gave each cut the attentive care of a calligrapher's stroke.

"What do I have to do to make you understand," he asked Mitani, "that I would love you no matter what becomes of me? Do I have to write it in my flesh and blood? Would that finally change your mind? Would that be enough? Because I would do it gladly. For you, Sensei, I would do so much more."

Izuru stared enthralled at the rivers of his own blood as they ran their course, dark crimson against his fair skin. He reached out to stroke Mitani's hair fondly with what remained of his hand, and cradle the back of his neck.

"You are," he whispered, "forever my lover."

Izuru felt like he would cry. But nothing came up, and the pleasure he felt welling up inside him he had no way to express, so the pressure of it just continued to build and build within him. That was why he had to do something to relieve it, he had to open himself up. Otherwise he felt he would burst with his love for Mitani, it hurt so much. If only his professor were not so blinded by his stubborn faith to see how much it hurt, and how wonderful it felt, to love him, to sacrifice this much for his sake. If only Izuru had realized before. He had been so mistaken. It wasn't that he'd die if Mitani abandoned him. It was the other way around.

I love you _so much_, he thought with so much of his being he could not be sure if he actually said it or not. I love you so much I could die. . . .

At some point he collapsed. Startled back to reality by his sudden stillness, Mitani shook him, called his name; but unlike that time before on the floor of Izuru's room, which now seemed like ages ago, there was no response.

He rolled the boy onto the floor and checked his pulse, but could not be sure if he felt one or not. Nor could he feel even a single breath stir from Izuru's parted lips. God, Mitani swore, he should have seen this coming. He should have stopped it while he had the chance, instead of sitting there watching his mutilate himself.

"Izuru!" he called, patting the boy's face, clinging desperately to what little hope he had left, however dim and irrational it was. "Izuru, listen to me! Don't do this to me!"

But Izuru's face was already pale—deathly white next to the bloody prints Mitani left on his cheek. The sheen of sweat was still on his temples, beneath his lip, his brows unsettled over his closed eyes as if he had simply fallen asleep, but Mitani knew better.

His blood was everywhere. Dark crimson on the counter and spread across the kitchen floor. Running red over his body and over Mitani's—running from his forearm, opened from his elbow to the heel of his hand, running from between his legs, and from his mutilated hands and feet. There was so much of it Mitani did not know what to do. Oh, he knew what anyone else would think, if they caught them like this. His fingers twisted in his hair, biting back a cry, a curse, a sob. "Izuru. . . ." You've damned us both.

He sat back on his heels, suddenly feeling trapped in his little apartment. Panic and grief gripped his throat, made his vision swim in tears, his mind reel. Whatever he did now, it wouldn't save either of them.

—

No one but the devil and Mitani knew what happened in the room after that.

In Meifu, a discrepancy was found between the list of those who had died that day and those who reported for judgment. Further investigation raised a red flag: What had looked like a simple suicide suddenly revealed itself to be much more complicated, and was missing a soul to go with it. The epicenter was a small island off the shore of Nagasaki, square within the jurisdiction of the Second Block. The case was immediately transfered to the Summons Division and, exactly as planned, the job of retrieving the soul fell to Tsuzuki Asato.

—

Early the next morning a local fisherman arriving for work was startled to find a body floating in the bay. It looked to be a high school student in age, and the currents that flowed into this part of the bay came from the direction of Saint Michel, so it was not long before the police arrived at the island school. At first neither the headmaster nor the priest who had been taken to identify the body even recognized the body as Izuru's, and were not even aware there had been a problem when he failed to show up for class role call.

The body was stripped of any identifying effects, and mangled when the authorities pulled it out of the water—the skin covered with deep cuts and missing large sections of flesh where fish and crabs, attracted by the blood, had eaten away at the open wounds. Much of the left cheek and eyelid was missing. As were the last two fingers and toes on each hand and foot. The ragged wounds had been impeccably cleaned by scavengers, the skin around them an unreal blue-white like porcelain. The medics quickly covered him up as though he still had some dignity to preserve, but in all practicality, no one wanted to look at that ruined face longer than they had to.

The students had lined the wall which looked down onto the beach when the police car pulled up. Their staring faces were the image Father Robert took with him as he climbed into the back seat. If a priest was needed, they could assume someone was either dead or in some other sort of critical trouble, and their morbid curiosities entertained dozens of possibilities as they searched the crowd in order to deduce who was missing by process of elimination.

From among their numbers, Tsukiori fought for a clearer look. There was not much to see. A plainclothes detective said something to the headmaster, who was being calmed by Robert, but it was impossible to read their lips from so far away even if one had the ability, let alone to hear their conversation. Officers wearing white gloves were taking pictures of the surrounding area, and some of the idiot boys made "V" signs with their fingers when the cameras were turned up to the wall.

Tsukiori's eyes narrowed in suspicion, but the slight, wry upturn of the corner of the lips held no sympathy for the victim whose identity she already suspected as the mysterious student faded back out through the crowd. The devil had claimed its victim. The ordeal she had dreaded was only just beginning.

The authorities had the remains on a stretcher by the time Robert arrived at the scene. His first glimpse was of a masticated hand poking out from under the sheet that was quickly put back into place by a medical examiner. The priest prided himself on having a strong stomach, however, stronger than that of the headmaster who mingled with the police officers and investigators, looking for information as to what he could tell the parents of his student. Still, he hadn't expected anything like what he saw. Robert pulled back the sheet, just long enough to recognize half of the face as Okazaki's. Quickly covering it back up, he made the sign of the cross over the body and muttered a prayer, then crossed himself to ward away some unidentifiable evil.

"That's Okazaki, all right," he told the detective as they walked away and the stretcher was loaded into an ambulance. "Okazaki Izuru. His parents live in the city—"

He felt a cough coming on, and whipped out a handkerchief, covering his mouth with it. When he was able to speak again, he muttered, "My God, what happened to him? Could it be he just drowned?"

"Not likely," said the detective. "There would have been more water retention if that were the case. The body is so banged up, it will be difficult to tell even with an autopsy, but my guess is he was killed by the shock of hitting the water from a fall, possibly even before that. I noticed the high walls around the school he attended."

Father Robert stopped. "Do you think he jumped, Detective?"

"Why do you say that?"

"It seemed you were implying something to that effect."

"Well," said the detective, "it is also possible he was pushed."

Robert nodded. "Yes, I suppose. Though I don't like what that idea means for our school. Either way, will you please inform me as soon as you know the cause of death? Obviously, if it was murder we will all pray the perpetrator be swiftly brought to justice. But surely you must understand how vital it is I be able to rule out suicide or not. Suicide is a mortal sin, Detective. He wouldn't be able to be buried on church grounds if that turns out to have been the case."

"Sure, I understand," the detective nodded. Then he seemed to hesitate. "In that case, Father, there's something else you should probably know. But I tell you this as a kind of confession, all right? If this information leaked out it could jeopardize the investigation."

"You have my word."

The detective leaned close, dropping his voice to a whisper. "When the ME examined the body he found evidence of anal penetration."

Beside him, the priest covered his mouth. "You mean . . . Okazaki was involved in homosexual relations."

"We don't know that it was voluntary, but so far it doesn't look that way. There was a message burned into his back that seems to coincide with it. 'Forever my lover.' There were burn marks on the victim's genitals, as well." He noticed the priest's unease then, and said, "I'm sorry, Father. I should have warned you it would be difficult. But if you'll bear with me, what's more . . . It's strange, but the ring finger and little finger were removed from each hand. The same goes for the toes. There were dozens of wounds all over the body, but those are the only ones we can say for certain at this moment were intentional, probably even calculated. Did he or anyone else ever show any interest in the occult that you would be aware of?"

"I wouldn't know about anything like that," Father Robert said with some difficulty.

"Did you know the victim?"

"Yes, not intimately, but he was the student council president."

"President? He doesn't look like a senior."

"No," Robert said, "he wasn't." He told the investigator of the business with the duels as succinctly as he could. "What's more, Okazaki claimed he wanted to turn the student body around, to better emulate the ideals of Christ."

There was a hesitation in his voice that prompted the other to ask, "But you don't believe he meant it."

The priest shook his head. "Well, Okazaki and Fujisawa—that's the vice-president," he said while the man took down the name, "they might have everyone else fooled, getting top grades and acting pious, but they didn't fool me."

"They didn't, huh?"

"Do you believe in the Devil, Detective?" Robert said suddenly.

The officer seemed taken aback. "The Devil? Surely you're not suggesting—"

"No, no," Robert said with a sigh. "But I do believe that evil exists, and its influence is far-reaching. I hardly know how to explain it myself, but all I can tell you is that that boy, Okazaki, had the look of the Devil about him." He left the detective to contemplate what he could mean by that ambiguous, grave accusation, saying as he started to go, "Talk to Fujisawa and you'll see what I mean."

—

The other boys seemed to have much to say about the student council president and vice-president, but it was all rather one-sided. With exalting words, they painted glowing pictures of their student council officers, making them sound as though they were the saviors of the first- and second-year classes, young men who could do no wrong. The detective must have noticed the traces of fear underlying that, but he was blind to how deep it went. It was a fear of what might happen to them if they told what secrets they knew—if only on hearsay, of course—or if they implicated themselves in front of the administration. In hesitant tones and nervous glances, they told the police a different story, a more sanitized story, than the one they had heard whispered in the hallways; there were secrets here more sacred than school records. Washroom deals, cafeteria rumors, that had it on good authority the rivalry between their student leaders was more than just about seats on the council. That they were after something that went with the seat of president, Okazaki's position—that what they were really fighting over was a man.

"Okazaki?" said Fujisawa. "Yeah, I guess you could say I knew him pretty well."

He was polite young man, the epitome of charm, and so obliging to the investigator that in comparison he made Father Robert's accusation seem more like the rantings of a zealous nut-job. If any one of the students seemed suspicious in the way the priest described it would be the dorm chief, Tsukiori, who was more eager to find out what the police knew than he was of any help, asking strange questions like whether they had found any anagrams on the body, and if he could see the autopsy results when they came in. A deviant if the detective ever saw one. Which Fujisawa was anything but, cocky though he was.

"We've been in the same class our whole time at Saint Michel," he continued. "We hadn't met before that. My family's not from around here. I don't know if you'd call us friends, but for a time, I knew if I was going to confide in anyone it would be him. And vice versa. We were of like mind, Okazaki and I." Fujisawa smiled devilishly. Then he shrugged. "Until . . ."

"Until?" the detective echoed.

Fujisawa chuckled. "Well, until he stole the position of student council president from me after I won it fair and square."

"That must have made you angry."

Again, Fujisawa shrugged. "Of course, it did. He betrayed me. We couldn't be friends after that."

"So you tried to get back at him?"

"Yes," Fujisawa said, blinking. "But I never took it very far. To me, we were political rivals. _He_ was the one who always had to do things so intense. I know you're wondering if I killed him, and I'll admit that I would have been happy if he suddenly dropped dead. But I didn't do it. I don't know about his enemies among the third-years—he stabbed enough backs there, too—but personally I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out Okazaki committed suicide."

"Isn't that against his religion?" the detective asked as he wrote that down.

He was surprised when Fujisawa snorted. "Sure. I guess that would make sense, the guy attended a Catholic school and all. Still, he had a masochistic streak." How he knew, the other did not bother to ask. Fujisawa continued anyway without any prompting: "And, you know, there was a lot of pressure on him to get into a good college. It wears down a lot of youth these days, I hear. I wouldn't know myself." Another cocky smile.

The detective asked him if there was anything else he might have left out.

"Well . . ." Fujisawa hesitated.

"Yes?"

The boy did have a suspiciously wide grin on his face as he went to say something, but he stopped himself and thought it over instead. He might have mentioned to the detective how close Izuru had been to their teacher Mitani, how they had seemed practically joined at the hip since the end of the winter holiday, and he didn't mean side-to-side. It would have been the final blow in his rivalry with the deceased, revealing Izuru's secret obsession, seeing his memory slandered in the local papers.

However, a better idea occurred to him, one that could potentially be compromised by letting that particular piece of information slip. "It's probably nothing. . . ."

If he said that, it probably was something. Besides, there was a wicked gleam in Fujisawa's eyes when he said it. The detective waited for him to continue.

"An assistant librarian was let go about a month ago," the boy said; "a young, _female_ assistant librarian. I heard Okazaki admitted to inappropriate behavior with her. Not that that came as a surprise, though. If you knew her."

—

"I still can't believe it," Mitani said when it was his turn to be interviewed. "How could something so awful happen at this school, to one of our students?"

Of all the professors, he seemed to be taking the loss the hardest. Perhaps it was his age, the detective mused—he was too young to have experienced that kind of loss already—or that he had only been at Saint Michel for a few months. In that time, he must have gotten to know the boys well enough to form friendships, and hadn't yet been teaching so long as to be used to class turnover, or feel the apathy some of his older peers did. He exuded an almost tangible exhaustion as he stood outside in the hallway, resting his back against the wall, as though if the wall weren't there he would have collapsed in on himself long ago.

"Do you know yet how he died? I mean," he swallowed, "was it painless?"

"Not yet," said the detective. "But quite a few people I've talked to think Okazaki might have committed suicide."

"Suicide?" Mitani looked surprised. "Who said that?"

The detective said he couldn't say.

"No." Mitani shook his head, struggling with something inside. "He wouldn't do something like that. There's no reason he would do something like that. Not when he had everything going for him."

"Sometimes," the other tried to help, "the people we think have everything in the world are secretly being crushed under the weight of their own existence. The obligations they believe are being put on them, the stress. . . ."

The guilt.

Something swelled within Mitani suddenly at those words, some bodily reaction like an involuntary sob he couldn't risk showing. He sighed and covered his face for a moment to hide it. "I should have seen this coming," he hissed. "I could have prevented it. There must have been warning signs I just ignored. His grades were dropping, but I thought that was because of . . . He just _seemed_ happy."

"These kind of people are usually very good at hiding it. Especially from authority figures. Maybe he didn't want you to see."

Mitani looked up. That last part did sound like Izuru, but, "'These kind'?"

"The mentally disturbed."

"No," Mitani said again. "There wasn't anything wrong with Okazaki." Even as he said that, though, he couldn't help the images that returned all too fresh to his mind. The fingers lying on the kitchen counter without a body. The blood soaking through the towel as Mitani tried to press it to his wounds. Izuru's smile. _It doesn't hurt. . . ._ How could something like that _not_ hurt?

"Do you think he was pushed?" the detective suggested after Mitani was silent a moment.

"No. I don't know. I don't see why anyone here would—"

"Then what else could it be, Professor?"

Mitani was silent in thought.

"When was the last time you saw Okazaki?"

"Around five," Mitani started slowly. "He came to my apartment after dinner for a few minutes. I was advising him on getting into college. I thought he had a shot at Tokyo University, though he didn't seem too thrilled about going there." He smiled fondly. Sadly. "When he left he seemed fine. I don't know where he went after that."

"Can anyone verify your story?" the detective asked dryly.

Mitani frowned. "I don't know. I'm not sure anyone else saw him."

"Then, are you aware your statement puts you as the last person to see him alive?"

"I don't know." Mitani could feel his self-control began to slip away with Izuru's presence. "I don't know what to think." Why couldn't he have just left me alone? Why did he have to choose me? There was no good reason for it. There was no good reason for any of this. "I don't know what to think!" he hissed, covering his nose and mouth in his hand as he felt that familiar lump rising in his throat. But, once again, no tears would come to the surface. Just the truth, aching to get out. It was because of me, that's why. It's my fault. . . .

Jesus. The man was a wreck. There was nothing more he could do for their investigation, not in this state. That was what the detective told himself as he went to put a reassuring hand to the young teacher's shoulder and said, "Look, let me know if you remember anything else. You should get some rest. Ask for some time off, and don't beat yourself up over this, okay?"

To his surprise, Mitani flinched from his touch. But after a moment, as though coming back to himself, he nodded slowly and answered in a whisper, "Okay."

—

"I need to talk to you, Professor," Father Robert said to Mitani, stopping him after mass, where they had prayed for Izuru's soul and that answers to his death might be found soon. Mitani nodded. Of course he could talk.

"About Okazaki."

Then it was certain. He knew.

Mitani wasn't sure how he knew that. So far Father Robert had not said anything about the boy's death specifically, nor had he accused Mitani of any crime. Couldn't it be that he was simply worried about the young professor? It wasn't as though Mitani hid his grief well.

Nonetheless, Mitani felt it with certainty in his heart. It was in the way the priest looked into his eyes when he said he wanted to talk about Izuru. He knew.

Mitani knew he had to do something. He loathed himself for it, but there was no other choice. Complaining of problems sleeping and stomach pains, he went to visit the school nurse to ask him for advice. He had only intended that, but as he was waiting, his eyes fell on a bottle of prescription medication lying on the desk beside him. "Is this the Father's?" he said.

Oh, yeah, the other answered as though suddenly remembering, it was just delivered. "I don't know if you heard, but the flu that's been going around hit him pretty hard. He has to be careful, you know, what with his heart condition. He can't just take any old over-the-counter for it either because of his medication." Then he retrieved a bottle from the cabinet and excused himself for a few minutes, leaving Mitani alone in the room and the cabinet unlocked.

"Thank you for agreeing to come and see me, Professor," Father Robert said when Mitani stepped into the rectory. He quickly covered his mouth with a handkerchief as a sudden cough wracked him.

It prompted Mitani to say, "My goodness, Father, you don't sound well at all. Are you all right?"

The priest nodded as he overcame the last spasms. "It sounds serious, but it's nothing more than a common flu, I assure you. The wet weather the other week seemed to make it worse, though."

"If that's the case, let me make you some tea," Mitani offered.

Robert agreed that would be good, and they went into the bright kitchen, he taking a seat at the round French country-style breakfast table, Mitani going to put water in the kettle to boil. As he did so, he asked over his shoulder, "You said you wanted to see me about something, Father?"

"Yes. About Okazaki."

"That's what you said." Mitani lowered his eyes and his voice at the name. "His death came as such a shock, I still can't believe it, and his class is devastated. It's not a natural thing for them, you know? For someone that young and healthy, someone you're used to seeing every day to just . . . _go_ like that. Do you think, for their sake, his parents would agree to hold a memorial service here, at the school chapel? I'm sure it would mean a lot to the other students, help them cope with their grief at a time like this."

"Why do I get the feeling that you're speaking of yourself?" the priest said with sympathy in his voice.

But Mitani started just the same.

"Anyway," Robert continued, "if the parents are anything like my experience tells me, this will be one of the few times they will be protective of the child. I would dread asking their permission."

Mitani smiled nervously. "Izuru would have said the same thing."

"'Izuru'?"

At the rising tone of Robert's voice, Mitani chastised himself for the slip. It was not a lie, however, to say, "He told me to call him that outside of class once. He said Okazaki was too impersonal."

"But you were his professor."

"That's what I told him."

"You spent a lot of time together outside class?"

"Is there anything in the rules that says I can't?"

Robert was silent for a second as he thought the question over, and finally said, "No. There isn't. And the headmaster does encourage professors to form healthy relationships with their students, as mentors."

"He may have had a lot of privileges I didn't growing up," Mitani said as he prepared the black tea, if only because the silence otherwise would have been unbearable to him, "but there were things about Okazaki that reminded me of myself. I guess it was like living high school all over again, seeing this place through his eyes. I wanted him to get into a real fine college, a better one than I ever went to. No," Mitani changed his mind, "I wanted him to be happy. Truly happy. That's all I wanted. . . ."

He trailed off, and the awkward silence he had been trying to prevent descended anyway. Mitani coughed. "Sugar, Father?"

"Yes, please." After what felt like another excruciatingly long moment, the priest said rather abruptly, "Mitani. The one you confessed to having sinful thoughts about, it was Okazaki, wasn't it?"

Mitani started so bad he nearly dropped the cup he was taking down from the cupboard. In an instant, a million questions ran through his head. Did the priest know? Did he only suspect? If he knew, would he tell the police? Or had he already implicated Mitani enough? His gaze fell on the bottle of prescription medication sitting on the counter, reminding him what he had come with the intention to do. . . . Now Mitani wasn't sure if he could go through with it, though it had all seemed so easy when he was sitting alone in the nurse's office.

The whine of the kettle stirred him back to the present. Taking it off the stove with shaking hands, he found he could finally answer honestly, "Yes. Yes, they were about him."

"I thought as much." Father Robert sighed. "I will admit he did have a rather alluring personality—and knew it and used it to his advantage, too. I suppose, for someone who's not used to a place like Saint Michel, it might be easy to, ah, _confuse_ that for . . . well, something else. As compensation for what he cannot have."

Mitani raised his head. The Father refrained from voicing his disappointment outright, but Mitani knew how he must have been condemning him in his head. Like he had before when Mitani tried in good faith to confess. . . .

Robert began to say something more, but another violent cough seized him before he could get very far. It was a strong fit, and made his eyes screw shut and his body shake with the discomfort. While he was distracted, Mitani worked quickly, appearing to hurry for the Father's benefit. From a bottle he had stolen from the nurse's office, he dropped a strong dose of precisely what the priest's medication warned him not to take into the mug, and heaped a spoonful of sugar on top of it. Then he poured hot water over the tea for Father Robert's cup and his own.

He stirred it all together, and set it on the table before the priest. "Here, Father," he said gently. "I added a little extra sugar to help it go down easier. Are you all right? Is there anything else I can do for you?"

Robert waved his offer away as he collected himself. "Thank you," he said in a scratchy voice. "But you've done enough."

Mitani chafed at his choice of words but said nothing.

Father Robert gripped the cup with both hands, and though it was hot, raised it to his lips to take a generous sip. "M-m," he agreed. "That is soothing. You really are a considerate person, Mitani. That's why it pains me to put you through this sort of ordeal but . . . No. It is necessary." He put the cup down. "First, do you have something you wish to confess to me?"

Mitani tried to smile but failed miserably. "Why do you ask?"

"When you said the dreams had gone away, you were hiding something," Father Robert said, watching his face carefully. "Don't give me that look, Professor. I've been a priest for two-thirds of my life: I know when someone is lying to me, or hiding something. When the police detective mentioned Okazaki had had sexual relations with a man before he died, I had to wonder. Technically, now I've broken his confidence by telling you that, but I have a hunch that it doesn't come as any sort of surprise to you. Does it, Professor Mitani?"

He paused, letting the noose of claustrophobia tighten until he saw Mitani swallow.

"Tell me truthfully. Were you and Okazaki having sexual relations?"

What could he say, when the priest had just admitted to breaking the seal of a police officer's confession? It seemed meaningless now, but Mitani said, "As Confession, Father?"

The priest did not exactly nod, but his motion as he took a longer drink of his tea seemed to acquiesce.

"In that case," Mitani tread slowly, fearfully, "I guess we were seeing each other." Despite himself, he found even now he could not lie to a priest. And anyway, it might not matter for long. . . .

"How often?"

He shrugged. "Every other night, maybe. . . . Whenever we could. We didn't keep track. But it wasn't like that—"

"And the night he died?"

"Like I told the detective—"

"The police think that he was raped—"

"What?"

"—and you've just admitted to taking advantage of a student—"

"I didn't kill him!"

The priest was taken aback by his outburst. But truth be told, not as much as Mitani was to hear that bit of news. He ran a hand through his long hair, his breath coming raggedly as he repeated, "I know what you're thinking, Father, but I didn't do it. I didn't kill him. I wouldn't lay I hand on him. I mean I wouldn't . . . You have to understand, I'd never hurt him."

His eyes full of attempted understanding, Father Robert reached a hand halfway across the table. But the gesture only seemed fake to Mitani. Just a ploy to get him to confess to what he did not do. Even if the old priest suddenly claimed to have been afflicted by the same sort of devil, Mitani would not have believed him.

"You need to go to the police," he told Mitani calmly. "Turn yourself in. That's what any good Christian would do."

"But I didn't _do_ anything!"

"Then at least tell them everything that you know. Cooperate. If you don't tell them what went on between you two, it will be the same as obstructing justice. And you do want justice for Okazaki, don't you?"

"Yes. God, but if I do that, it will be the same as admitting to a crime! They'll never believe me."

Unable to even hit his fist on the table like he wanted to, Mitani stood abruptly, and turned his back on the priest. The sky and the sea outside the window were calm and blue, possessing a peace he felt he would never have again. Because of all this. Because he had been too weak to stop himself. To stop Izuru. . . .

"I can't do that, Father, I just can't," he stressed. "I didn't kill Izuru. I was selfish, yes, and a fool, and I never meant to hurt him, but . . . But if I confess everything, I might as well throw away the rest of my life."

"You mean lose your job? Your ability to teach?" Robert said to his back. "You should have realized that would happen when you started something with a student!" The pause grew cold. Then: "I cannot lie to the police, Professor. If they ask me what I know about you, I'll have no choice but to tell them."

"And break the seal of Confession?" Mitani swallowed hard. "You can't do that."

Robert shrugged. "You haven't confessed anything to me that I didn't already suspect. Even if I only give them hunches to go on, the truth will come out in the end. But I can't just sit back and do nothing. Vows or not, there is a moral high ground here, that much I know without any doubt. A student's immortal soul is at stake here, Professor, and if you do not have the good sense to do the right thing, I will."

Mitani bit his lip, saying nothing.

"Okazaki trusted you," the priest continued to accuse him, "and you broke that trust. You broke the school's trust. And now you haven't even the humanity to do right by him. God forgive me, I should have—" He coughed again, trying to catch his breath and start over. "I should have—"

Whatever the Father had been about to say was lost forever in a coughing fit more violent than any that came before. He covered his mouth with his handkerchief, hacking into it as he hunched over in pain. Then the cough turned into a wheeze. As he gasped and fought for breath, Mitani fought the urge to turn around. Those sounds terrified him, but he could no longer meet the priest in the eye, not after all he had done.

"No. You're absolutely right. I should have done the right thing from the very start, Father," he said to the window, but there was no answer but the unnatural gasping of the priest behind him. "But, God help me . . . it did feel right."

The dull thud of a body hitting the floor finally made him turn.

"Shit," Mitani said to himself. He went to the priest's side, glancing into the tea cup as he did, and was not surprised to find it empty. He hadn't expected the reaction to be quite this sudden. For the briefest of moments, Mitani doubted his decision. Was he not ensuring his eternal damnation with what he had done—the cold-blooded murder of a man of the cloth?

But who would know what he had done? There was no one to accuse him. Except Father Robert, but that would no longer be the case soon.  
He knelt down beside the priest, who rolled and clutched at his chest and struggled for even the slightest of breaths. His fingers tugged at Mitani's sleeve and he tried to tell him to call for help, but all he managed were a few unintelligible syllables. It would have done him no good anyway.

"I'm sorry it had to be this way, Father," Mitani said as gently as he could. He stared into Robert's eyes, and felt only a numb sense of remorse when he found a look of abject hatred aimed back at him. "But I can't allow you to turn me in. Not for something I didn't do. I don't want to go to prison." He pulled himself out of the old man's grip. "And I won't lose my ability to teach. I won't."

The priest was as good as gone. Mitani did not need to check his pulse to see his heart was failing him, and rapidly. He sat down on the carpet and crossed his legs, dropping his hands into his lap with a sigh. Unprovoked, he felt a tear blur his vision and slowly squeeze itself from the corner of one eye. "Father," he whispered, "you can hear my confession now."

—

The students were surprised to say the least when police arrived at their school for the second time in just a few short days. This time it was Father Robert the medics wheeled away; and though their professors told them he was being rushed to the hospital for a massive heart attack, it was apparent even they didn't know the whole story, and either way they somehow knew they would not be seeing the old priest again.

The authorities lingered around the rectory, asking Mitani what had happened. The young professor explained the father had been taking medication for a heart problem and had lately been afflicted by a strong cough lingering after a bout of flu. It was during one of those wracking coughing fits that the priest had collapsed. Mitani had stepped out of the room and did not notice at first that anything was amiss, but when he saw the Father on the floor he called in emergency services right away and tried to resuscitate the priest. But it was to no avail.

He related all this calmly to the authorities. If it seemed strange to them that Mitani was the last person to see either of Saint Michel's recently departed alive, they made no mention of it.

Fujisawa kept it to himself as well as he watched his professor from afar. The fact remained he knew nothing about Mitani's involvement with any certainty other than what he felt in his gut, but that did nothing to deter him. This was his chance, and though some of the satisfaction he had been anticipating would be gone now that Izuru was as well, the thought that Mitani was not as meek as he appeared nonetheless thrilled Fujisawa. If only posthumously, he would take what Izuru had valued above life itself for his very own.

A service was held for Father Robert by the faculty and conducted by a priest who was a temporary replacement until someone to hold the position permanently could be found. There was something eerie about it: two deaths in three days, and they say death always comes in threes. But Saint Michel's students, despite their talk, saw this tragedy as nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence. And Mitani, who felt he should have been praying hardest of all, was often seen with a vacant look on his tired face as the rest of the school stood and sang the hymns.

Waiting until the classroom was vacated, Fujisawa smiled from his seat. Who else could even begin to understand how their professor felt but he?

"You seem a million miles away, Sensei," he called out as he got up, making Mitani jump and shake himself back to the present. "Not that I can say I blame you. It was so sudden, after all, Okazaki's death, and now Father Robert. . . ."

"Yes. It was," Mitani agreed. "A person can tell himself that death is just a part of life, and that everything happens for a reason, but believing that is something else entirely. Especially when . . ."

He trailed off, his thought left unfinished, but Fujisawa nodded anyway. "I know. I wonder myself what we're going to do about the student council. It doesn't seem right so soon after his death to give his position to someone else, but I can only hope to live up to his legacy."

Mitani nodded as well, sympathetically in fact, as though completely taken in by Fujisawa's show of remorse. "I understand how you feel," he said, "and if there's anything I can do to help—"

Fujisawa laughed. "Sensei, no offense, but it looks like _I_ should be the one saying that. You've had a rough time of it. Everyone else has been in their own little world, dealing with this tragedy, so they don't really notice," he said to Mitani's questioning look, "but to me it's quite obvious how hard you've taken it. I think it's safe to say you could use a helping hand right now. Let _me_ be the one to give it to you. Let me be the one to help you cope with your grief."

He approached Mitani's desk, the faintest of smiles on his lips full of pity one could take solace in, if they ignored the insincerity that hid in the shadows behind it. "Let me be what Izuru was for you, and forget about him," he said in a lower voice, and put his hand on Mitani's shoulder.

Mitani shrugged it off. He glanced quickly at the open door, but everyone seemed to have already gone to lunch and the hallway was quiet. "You don't know what you're talking about, Fujisawa," he hissed.

"But I do," Fujisawa said. "Izuru told me."

The other started. "He told you?"

"Don't worry. I'm not going to tell anyone." Fujisawa's tone was intimate, conspiratorial, and the other could only stare at him incredulous. "It would be awful counterintuitive, don't you think?"

"I think you'd be better off staying far away from me."

"Sorry." Fujisawa smiled. "I can't do that."

"Why?"

"Why do you think? Because I like you, Sensei."

At the look he gave Mitani then, the young professor was suddenly beside himself with grief.

It was different from before: It was not grief for Izuru. What he had told himself to console himself all along was a lie. He noticed with the clarity he had not allowed himself before the beauty that Fujisawa possessed. The danger that was in his sharp eyes and supple lips that knew things a boy his age shouldn't—the lithe form under his uniform backlit by the sunlight. It was a beauty worlds apart from Izuru's, but as senseless to compare as wisteria and lilac. Mitani had known his flesh would get him in trouble for its desires, but once again he could not help himself. This was no devil's doing. He simply wasn't as strong as he had once believed.

He did want Fujisawa like that. He was already drunk beyond hope on the wine of youth.

Outside the tall windows, the sky was blue against the Gothic stone towers of Saint Michel's halls and chapel. The wind off the water still carried winter's chill, but the first pale plum blossoms were opening in the courtyard.


	3. Muraki File, Part A

2

_Here am I, a lifetime away from you  
The blood of Christ, or the beat of my heart  
My love wears forbidden colors  
My life believes_

—

Each year when spring comes we celebrate the blooming of the cherry trees. How ironic it is—the eating and drinking and song-singing under their blossom-laden boughs—that we admire and look forward to the return of life on this particular tree. In all of Japan's rich history, their blossoms have come to represent the springtime of youth and at the same time the glorious and heartbreaking brevity of life. They have moved the hearts of poets frozen by winter, and knotted the stomachs of students returning to school. And they have been unwitting conspirators in the Meiji philosophy of Japan's exceptionalism, and consequently the war mentality that followed it.

They hide their identity from us well. It is only in the dark of night that they reveal themselves to be monsters.

There are corpses buried under the cherry trees. Ever since I heard that as a boy I have found myself regarding them with suspicion. No, perhaps a better way to put it is that I feel like I know their secret, that they know I know, and that it is something we share between us. With a morbid fascination I imagined their roots wrapped around decomposing bodies, soaking up the blood from those shriveled veins, that that was what tinged the base of the petals vibrant pink when they were ready to fall. I imagined their twisted trunks that were each one unique to be the reincarnated souls of Daphnes and Myrrhas, twisting in that prison in the agony of their sins, for plants do not attain enlightenment. Because of this, it is a strange relationship I have with these trees.

And now they have returned to haunt me again, bursting white like the breakers of waves outside my office window. Watching the petals rise from their highest boughs in a sudden gust of wind against the blue sky, I am moved by a sensation of loftiness that is no less than cliche, and already I mourn the blossoms that will soon be scattered and gone. However, walking under those trees as I return at night, the stillness of that air taunts me, teasing a memory from my mind. In that vacuum of stillness, where mist begins to gather, the black trunks that stand vigil whisper to me and embrace me as one of their own, destined to share the same fate. And thus every year, I find those words returning to my mind without fail:

It was a night like this, wasn't it?

The night I killed that boy?

—

What was it that made me what I am, I cannot say. Though I am not so delusional as to deny to myself the causes of my illness—I know those all too well, for it is a masochistic habit of mine to over-analyze myself—I can never make the impulse to hurt and kill that resides inside me conform to any of the logic I so crave. Is it in mankind's nature to murder? Is violence the inevitable way of things? We are all selfish and depraved creatures from birth, conceived in violence, and in the end we all return to whence we came in the abrupt rending of breath from the flesh. Even though in my youth my aversion to pain and death was strong, I know I was only repressing the beast that had been inside me all along, pacing and waiting for the bars of its cage to collapse and let it free if only for a little while.

Who should I thank for setting it free, I wonder. That is another question entirely.

The first time I killed a woman it could be said I did not know what I was doing. Which is not to say it was accidental. I was afraid for myself then, and called it an accident, a mistake; but after I kept making the same mistake time and time again, could I really continue to call it that? In any case, mistakes are a thing to be abhorred, and even though I disgusted myself—that is to say, the women disgusted me, and the act disgusted me, and my impulse—I could not deny and do not deny now the thrill this mistake brought me each time. As I felt the life leave those women, the act of destruction was so complete as to be almost its exact opposite: an act of creation. It is something beautiful, if you know from which angle to look at it, the truth that nothing lasts forever but all falls into corruption, and is not something to be feared as I had once thought. We are taught that once the mind has awakened to this truth that all existence is suffering and transient, only then can it truly find peace.

But where is my peace? The more I am awakened to the pain of my own existence, the more its insignificance is rubbed in my face like a dog's nose in his own feces. I am allowed neither death nor peace. I am only allowed to observe, and to facilitate. This is my punishment and my blessing.

There was a total lunar eclipse that night in Kamakura. For a few hours the moon shone red, bathing that ancient landscape in crimson like light shining through a red paper lantern. It was that kind of unreal atmosphere that stirs the blood and passions. Murderous passions. And desires for something feminine, whose color it is.

I had been in town for research and met a woman, who I guessed to be a good five years older than I was, alone in a bar. Alone and drunk, but not so drunk as to be deceived by something imaginary. She approached after watching me from afar, I lit her cigarette, and as we made small talk she praised me as I had so often been praised before. It was clear it was I she had become drunk on, and that she wanted. I in turn was fascinated by her painted lips, whose familiar shape in the poor lighting shone dully as though she had merely bit them too hard and they had bled. The flash of her white teeth behind them as she laughed hollowly against the backdrop of an old, sultry record created such an arousing and dangerous contrast.

After learning I was a doctor she expressed herself as a woman of science. In philosophy rather than profession, she said. And though I did not accord such a profession of motive the seriousness it did not deserve, I allowed her her morbid fantasy. Our relationship seemed to be evolving quickly toward one of doctor and patient. She called me "Sensei" around her exhaled cigarette smoke, and asked unflinchingly as she leaned forward over her crossed legs in fascination about surgical procedures and medical oddities.

We took our coats and left together. From there we took a leisurely walk in the woods, never minding that we were no doubt trespassing on someone's property. The cherry blossoms were in bloom, so we went searching for some, and found a lovely grove that shone lavender in the strange moonlight.

As we stood among them, she confessed her masochistic fantasies. Like a protagonist ripped from a Kono Taeko story, she admitted to wanting me to make love to her right there. Violently, like she was an innocent schoolgirl or a vampire's victim. Naively, she believed handing over that kind of power would turn me on.

What was effective, however, was her complete trust. Perhaps she was truly drunk on her lips, either on the alcohol or her vision of myself, but rather than impair her judgment it brought her true desires repressed by a prudish society to the surface. She was curious about what it was like to die. She was not afraid of it, but was of the type who lived passionately in anticipation of its coming on sudden wings. It must be like sex, she said; if an orgasm can be called a little death, couldn't death be called the biggest orgasm? I admired her logic.

So I helped her on her way. As she leaned back in my arms, exposing her breast and throat to the ultimate vulnerability the seed of mother nature inside us resists—like a sacrificial victim draped willfully over my altar—I took her in that way from which there is no return. I took her life.

She gasped as my knife penetrated her breast. A gasp of ecstasy or pain, or perhaps shock that I had held her to her fantasies—it made no difference to me. That gasp, the startled emotion on her lips and knitted brow, purified her body of its filthy, animalistic lusts, and redeemed her womanhood in those last few seconds of her life. In the blood that poured thick and brown and clean from her wounds, I received her release as though osmotically in my own body. I lowered hers to the grass and its dusting of cherry petals, and I had the distinct feeling that the act I had committed was just as much for the trees' benefit and pleasure as for my own. They would have a new corpse to feed on, and another mind driven to the brink of its ego by their lustiness.

Only then, when I looked up from her body, did I realize I was not alone in the grove. A teenage boy stood there in a thin robe, no older than thirteen or fourteen. I would learn later that this was the one night he had worked up the courage to stage his escape, but for the time being that irony was lost on me.

For the time being his beautiful young face, which still possessed a stirringly androgynous quality, stared at me in horror and defiance. It must have been how the youth Atsumori looked at Kumagae no Naozane when his helmet was finally knocked off, his tender age revealed, and he urged Kumagae to kill him quickly. Had he perhaps realized, as well, how appealing a figure he might cut to the hardened warrior, arousing incestuous thoughts that stayed the sword as long as it did? On one level, this boy who stood staring at me was a witness that I would have been justified in silencing for my self-preservation. However, it was something stronger, some visceral reaction that arose without any prodding, that led me to go after him the way I did.

He shrank from me, but did not run. Why is one question that I continue to ponder even now, without success. Though he fought, understandably, through what followed, and though I admit my presumption is based on personal bias, on some unconscious level he seemed to accept what happened as though he deserved it. A necessary evil.

I removed my bloodstained coat, forced him to the dew-dampened ground, and pulled open his robe. His naked body still possessed the somewhat feminine softness of youth, though he seemed under-nourished, and was pale like a porcelain doll—like a child of some ancient court, kept out of the sun's harmful rays. The way his full lips opened without a sound seemed almost coy to my depraved mind. And as I felt the lust that had been sparked by the woman's blood growing within me, I suddenly hated the boy and his purity that stoked that lust, and I longed to hurt him for it.

I pinned him there and ran my hands over his face and over his body, relishing the shivers of disgust that ran through him as I did so. Every curve of his body and each involuntary flex of muscle returned a memory to me that was strikingly vivid in its familiarity. I stroked his sex and it responded in spite of his mind's will. The struggle was evident in the furrowing of his brows and how he closed his eyes tight, and chewed his lovely lips, even then not able to completely stifle his whimpers and gasps. For a little while I was blinded by his reaction, and could have sworn I knew the boy below me, who had reacted in just the same way once, nearly a decade and a half ago.

I yearned to taste him. His fear, his revulsion, his pure, involuntary desire that could not be repressed once aroused. Shocked gasps fell from his perfect lips as I fellated him. He must not have experienced even on his own the pleasure of sex, he seemed taken so completely unawares. I reached between his legs and gave him the first sensation of penetration.

Like suddenly waking from a dream, he started to resist then. Verbally, mostly, for his body seemed as though frozen by, again, I know not what emotion. I felt a spark of anger grow within me. He was stunning as he struggled and the raw emotions were displayed so intimately on his face, but I could not help resenting his natural aversion. Could he not appreciate what I was doing for him?

To say that, it sounds as though I believed I was doing the boy a favor, but in truth my motives were selfish. They were ruled by a desire to see him suffer, to see him ruined just as that other boy's innocence had been ripped from his body and ruined so many years ago. It was that as much as his spoiled beauty that prompted me to fuck him in that grove, in that humiliating manner. I wanted him to suffer as much as I had. I wanted his appearance to become as much an evil to him as mine had become to me. To die young and violently at the peak of his beauty, like the Atsumori of legend, like a young cherry tree cut down in full bloom, and to know nothing more, that was the only fitting existence for such a rare person as he, and yet I begrudged him even that luxury. I too would have met such an end if fate had not intervened, and condemned me to a life of endless ennui and emptiness, a slow rotting away. If I could not be granted freedom from my memories, why would I allow this boy that?

My malice toward him blurred together in my mind with the deep-seated malice I had carried with me since my adolescence, my lust for him with the lusts of my youth. In his tortured face I saw my own naive teenage self disgusted at the pleasure. I saw Saki startled and betrayed. I saw grandfather's patient writhing in his exquisite agony. And somehow through all these thoughts that gave me such pleasure I found the boy himself, the hollow subject of my cruel projections. My experiment. My doll. Shattering exponentially. Responding obediently to the strings I pulled.

Everything I longed to do to those phantoms of my mind I did to that boy. In the afterglow I murmured words of ancient texts that rose up faithfully from my memory, and with my fingertips wrote the jagged characters of their curses into his skin. Under my nails the letters rose to the surface in thin red welts, but that alone could not have caused him any more pain than the damage I had already done his fragile body. And still he screamed. My precious cicada out of season, mourning this cast-off shell of a world, he cried and filled the still air of the cherry grove with that pure, overwhelming drone.

How I wished I could prolong his ecstasy forever, and witness that descent into insanity that ensues when the mind reaches its breaking point—to know that I was the author of this creation, the sower of a seed that caused his very cells to burn with a fire that could not be put out except by my word alone.

His already fragile body could not stand that strain for long, however, and eventually consciousness left him. Then I left him as well—there beneath the cherries for his parents or some lowly groundskeeper to find, broken and humiliated.

—

Perhaps out of a sense of guilt, or again perhaps out of a sense of pride—I cannot be sure which—I pursued the boy the next morning as well. After I left him that night, I began to regret that my actions might make front-page news. Reality was quite to the contrary. The only word of the incident in the local paper was a small blurb under the police reports. It mentioned no names, only that the police were looking for the person who had murdered a woman visiting from out of town and raped a teenage boy. There were no suspects.

I was fortunate when I arrived at the hospital, thinking I might see if the boy had been taken there, to overhear a conversation at the front desk between a receptionist and a nurse who had tended to the boy personally. She felt sorry for him, the latter said, for being forced upon at his tender age, and worried that the doctor could not find the source of the pain that seemed to seize his entire body even now. She had heard of post-traumatic stress, but this was different, and very much physiological.

I stepped in, apologizing for eavesdropping, and told them their conversation had piqued my interest. My line of research was not exactly orthodox, so I was not unqualified to examine the patient, and in any case a second opinion could do no harm. But I do think it was rather my looks and manner that ultimately persuaded them to ask the doctor permission, which he granted having exhausted other possibilities himself.

When I stepped into the room, with its sterile palette of whites, the boy was asleep, his face turned away from me toward the sunlight coming through the window as though tracking it like an opened flower. When the fits seized him, the doctor explained, he would usually soon pass out, unable to bear the stress for long. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his brow indicating his last fit may have been very recent, or perhaps it was an indication of pneumonia from being left out in the dank spring night air. In any case, they had him on painkillers as well, for the physical trauma, and a cotton ball was taped to his arm where an IV had been inserted and removed some time ago. He was out like a light, in some dreamless place.

The doctor trusted me, as a fellow man of medical science, enough to leave me alone with the boy for a few minutes. I suppose I could have killed the boy, put him out of his misery right then and there, but that had never been my intention. They say that most criminals are braggarts, flaunting their crimes in the face of authority. If that is true, than maybe that was what drove me to visit him like that—to see my handiwork again, in better light. I could not harm my perfect creation any more than I already had. He had become a part of me.

I learned his name, scrawled on a medical chart, but that knowledge did nothing for me. I bent over him and untied the top tie of his hospital gown, then pulled it gently back to look at the top of his chest. His sternum rose normally with each breath, but underneath that otherwise smooth skin were malevolent words no ordinary person would see, that no x-ray or MRI would pick up. Under my touch they showed themselves vaguely and briefly, like welts forming in the skin. The boy stirred at the discomfort this caused, but did not awaken. The doctor would never learn what afflicted him so long as he couldn't see, so long as he relied on technology and the skeptical, quantified science that had been hammered into him. When the boy finally wasted away, after years of futile testing and excruciating pain, they still would not know the cause. Just as grandfather had never known what ailed and sustained his mysterious patient.

A man's voice came from the door, different from before: "Is he lucid?"

"No," the doctor said. "He passed out again, I'm afraid."

"Good," a woman sighed in such a diminutive voice it was difficult to tell what she meant by her comment.

I replaced the fold of the gown, and stood and turned around to excuse my presence.

As soon as I saw the couple that had entered with the doctor, I knew they had to be the parents. The man had the same fine, light hair and expression of constant inner anguish that I remembered seeing on the boy's face. He wore a suit that from just one glance was obviously expensive, yet he wore it awkwardly and uncomfortably as though he reviled it. The woman, in contrast, was wearing a splendid kimono, her hair was dark and pulled back in a conservative manner, and her face still held a naivety of youth in the smile that would not disappear even in the presence of her ill son. No one had to tell me: I knew instinctively that they were a very old family, and very wealthy.

As I went forward to introduce myself, the father asked who I was and what I was doing there with his son.

"This is Dr Muraki, Mr Kurosaki," the doctor said for me.

"I was in the area, and became curious when I heard about your son's mysterious condition. I thought I might examine him myself," I explained, bowing. I did not think they were the types to shake hands. "My research takes me down some rather unusual paths, you see. I thought I might be able to shed new light here."

"And?" said the father. "Do you know what's wrong with him?"

"It appears to be pneumonia."

The doctor seemed startled and began to say something about how I had not been here earlier, when the boy was brought in, but the father cut him off. "Pneumonia." He turned the word over on his tongue, nodding. "That seems about right."

"With all due respect, Mr Kurosaki," the doctor said, "but from the perspective of a trained medical professional—"

"Thank you for your concern," the father said to him, "but you've done all you can for the boy already. I would like to speak to Dr Muraki alone."

The doctor caught the hint, but looked rather reluctant as he left us to attend to a passing nurse's question. "I'll stay here with him," the mother said, and went to sit by her son's bed.

"Your name sounds very familiar," the father said to me at one point in our conversation, as we sat on a veranda in the cold sunlight, beside plum saplings in the last of their bloom. "I think my father mentioned a Dr Muraki."

"That was probably my grandfather." He was famous in the medical community—infamous, to many—mostly for his research during the war. It did not strike me as strange he might have had some connection to this ancient family.

"A dynasty of doctors, is it? How can I not take your advice, then, Sensei? Especially when you seem to understand my position so well, and I haven't told you anything about my family."

"A doctor's intuition. Discretion is our first commandment."

"Indeed." He leaned back and lowered his voice. "It isn't pneumonia, is it?"

"No. The child is suffering a kind of post-traumatic stress. He will continue to relive the experience in his waking mind. The severity of his reaction would indicate to me it might have been compounded by some kind of previous trauma, or another mental disorder that might have remained latent until now." I did not mind feeding this man the first lies that occurred to me—his emotional welfare was no concern of mine—but he did not ask for a solution either.

He simply nodded. I had not expected an affirmation.

"I thought as much. In fact, we were thinking of moving him to a mental health facility."

I could understand his reasons. The son of a respected member of the community was raped. Such a place would afford his family more privacy than this hospital ever could. They were better equipped to handle a patient who would suffer frequent fits of delirium as well. But Mr Kurosaki's manner of speaking surprised me, indicating he had been giving the notion some thought for quite some time before my run-in with the boy. Besides that there was the finality of it, like he knew, as I already did, that his son would not pull out of his current condition. I asked him about it, and he had the following to say, begging my discretion.

"We've been having . . . problems with the boy for quite some time now."

"Behavioral or mental?"

He seemed loath to answer. "Well, you could call it a bit of both. We have had to confine him to the household because of it for a few years; last night was the first time he's sneaked out in several months. Perhaps it's only natural for a boy his age, but he doesn't seem to realize that what we do is for his own good. We tried hiring someone to treat him at home when it became too much of a struggle for the entire household, for his mother especially. This is the most peaceful I've seen her in years. She hasn't the stamina to deal with him; and now, to see the boy in such pain, I don't think she would be able to bear it."

I wanted desperately to ask what was wrong with the boy. I was burning with curiosity just knowing there could be something even more unique than I could have imagined about this person I had run into by chance. However, I thought it wiser to keep the question to myself for the time being, and keep Mr Kurosaki's trust. I said instead, "I understand your concerns. Those facilities do carry a certain stigma, but then, so do the conditions they treat. Submitting him may indeed be the best decision for everyone. Either way, your son's case does fascinate me very much. Will you keep in touch regarding his progress?"

I gave him my card and we parted ways.

It turned out that the more I observed them and the way they worried over the boy—not as a son, a living individual, but like their own future slipping away—the more I actually found myself feeling sorry for the boy. The notion touched me on second thought that, although the curse I had placed on him would eventually kill him, perhaps I should have done it outright: his sheltered life was not of the voluntary manner I had imagined. In either case, I could see now I had done him a favor. How fortunate it was we had met each other at such a time, and a pity it had not been sooner. Judging by the way those around the boy treated him, I must have been the only one in years to have shown him affection, even if only in my selfish, twisted way.

Somehow Oriya found out about the case and called me. He had put two and two together and figured I was the one behind the killing.

"It's deplorable, what you've done," he said after my confirmation.

"To the boy? Yes."

"To that woman. But since you've brought it up, yes, to the boy too. And on top of it all to visit him like that—to fool his folks into believing you actually want to help him. . . . The way you flaunt your actions in front of a police investigation like they were some sort of conquest, you must be damn proud of yourself."

"Just confident is all."

There was silence on the other end.

"You must think I'm some sort of monster."

He chose not to answer that, which I took as a positive response. An admission of his failure. His own human weakness. His inability to turn me in. To give up on me. "I hope that boy comes back to haunt you—for your own sake."

"I hope you're right."

I wanted to see him again. I could not help sympathizing with the boy. Despite the hatred I felt for him still, he became quite an irresistible figure in my mind after the fact, occupying a place almost as prominent as grandfather's patient. But unlike that man, whose life and death represented a tragedy so beautiful I could only dream of emulating it, the boy's situation was real and immediate. His life was, in so many ways, my own.

Is it not one's natural right to want to eradicate something like that?

—

I too come from a dynasty. However, instead of being descended from samurai or royalty I am the last in a short line of respected medical doctors. The importance of this was impressed on me from an early age, just as if it were some noble title that would be passed down from father to son. As a result, I was spoiled. I was surrounded by comfort and intelligence, and in that setting I resolved that I did not want to be a doctor. I was a frail child who felt faint watching his own blood being drawn. Watching the seasons pass in relative comfort from the veranda, I dreamed the idle dreams of childhood of becoming a naturalist. Math and science were simple subjects for me, but I would much rather have read novels and poetry and compose verses in my head than study formulas.

Fate had a different plan for me. Perhaps I knew it all along, in the dark recesses of my conscious mind. Just as though it were an inherited biological trait, even more dominant in my cells' nuclei than my own personality, I ended up becoming a doctor of medicine. Was it inevitable? Who can say such things with any certainty.

It seemed my family had always had money and connections, and my father bought a large house when he married. At that time, it was a sign of wealth and prestige to have a house in the traditional style, the larger the grounds and number of servants the better. A gravel driveway went through a wide gate at the entrance, and the gardens had been designed with careful thought to bring about the most auspicious balance of energies. Rhododendrons and maples, bamboo, quince, huge stones that in the early morning seemed possessed of a life of their own, delicately sculpted juniper and pine, irises that opened like nuns' habits in the summer around a koi pond—everything had its place. I could hear the wind rustling the bamboo leaves outside the shoji in the mid-afternoon when the house was still a peaceful place, and rainwater trickling into the pond. I spent summer days lulled by the drone of the cicadas on the wide teak veranda, which was swept every morning so only the freshest fallen leaves littered its planks in sparse elegance.

The indoors were filled with all the conveniences of the west, and treasures from my father's travels to China in his youth. Sumi-e scrolls hung on the walls of the study, where I could often find him working behind his monstrous cherry desk, sitting in a dark leather chair. I remember days I would sit in it before he came home, hoping my mother wouldn't catch me while I imagined what it would be like to be an esteemed doctor like him and his father before him, the one time I indulged myself in my father's fantasy. I would make sure everything was as he had left it before returning to my room with its full-size, western-style bed to study.

I grew up without any siblings with which to compete, and the help—a small staff that included a butler and a few maids—looked after my needs. Our meals were lavish, our clothing well-tailored, the public school I attended the highest class the best in the area, and I did not want for much. To me, it seemed this was how all children were raised. Of course, I knew that was not true, but at the same time I could not believe in poverty or strife, just as some say with conviction there is a God but cannot fathom Him.

That is not to say that I did not experience hunger in my young life, but it was not for anything material. And like physical hunger, I grew used to it, to the point the nagging feeling of emptiness was simply the background of day to day existence.

In my childhood, I was able to delude myself and pretend I had a normal family who loved one another, if in their unique ways. My father was at the office until late most days, and spent much of his time at home in his study. My mother spent the daylight hours in her own quarters, among her dolls and her embroidery and her God. They never showed any affection toward each other around me, but I figured this was only proper and typical. They must have truly loved each other once, even if they did not now; after all, theirs had not been an arranged marriage.

Perhaps I was too young, too full of optimism to notice the shadow that loomed over everything—or perhaps I saw it and wanted to wipe its presence from my mind, escaping into a fantasy so I did not have to accept the truth. It is difficult to say now. What I do know is that my mother's slip into psychosis was not as recent as I had once believed it to be, as something that came into being in only the last few years of her life. It was a gradual downward spiral, so gradual that at times she seemed as normal and sane as any other woman her age. It was only when her eyes fell into shadow a certain way that one could catch a glimpse of the personal demons that troubled her inside. It is possible she had even started to show signs of her illness during my parents' courtship.

Would my father—if it is his analytical mind I inherited—have seen her in all her faults as a welcome challenge for his real love? His science? Was it because she, a Christian, was a slap in the face to my grandparents, who had no real religion but adhered to the observances of the Japanese mish-mash of Shinto and Buddhism, that he married her? Or did she only convert after their marriage, out of the proverbial need for a meaning and comfort my father could not fill?

Whatever the case, my parents' relationship was a tenuous thing because of it. As if to compensate, she doted on her only son, and gave me everything she was capable of giving. It was not much. It was more akin to the kind of affection one gives a pet or a beloved stuffed animal—or in her case her dolls. But it was the most I could expect to receive from that tortured woman.

There were good days, when my mother behaved as a mother should, and as a proper housewife, busying herself with small work around the place, rearranging the kitchen or tending to her flowers. Other days she would spend in a heavy fog that neither her naps nor the radio could lift. On those days she spent among the dolls I would sometimes hear her singing to them—folksongs and psalms, never anything popular, melodies she used to sing to me when I was a baby—and those were the days I had to resist the visceral urge to hide from her the most.

My mother often frightened me. I cannot say why precisely even now, but I do think I was terrified of displeasing her and losing what little affection she did show me. In the meantime, I developed something of an obsession with her collection of dolls. They lined the wall of her sewing room, sitting on shelves and behind glass in cabinets, row upon row of chubby, perfect porcelain faces, imported and domestic, and most of them fairly expensive. It was a small price, however, for father to pay if it helped keep her mania at bay and he was glad to pay it, awarding her with a new one when he chanced to feel romantic, or apologetic, or when her depression became particularly bad. I still think she loved them more than she loved me. I do not think it was any fault of mine—it could not have been—though I cannot help feeling responsible nonetheless. I do believe it was simply her inability to connect with another human being, even—perhaps especially—one who was her own child.

I do not know if I have the right to blame her for that. I do, but whether she deserves my blame is another matter entirely. What I do know without a doubt is that my relationship with my mother is directly responsible for so much of who and what I have become. The single most important relationship in a primate's existence is the relationship between mother and child. Research has shown how monkeys raised in captivity without a mother's constant influence grow up to become outsiders, social pariahs, keeping to themselves because they truly do not know how to interact with others.

I am not a monkey, however. I can adapt by the example of others. I learned early on how to take care of myself. But as a human, I have the option of becoming an actor.

—

I hated mother's dolls. I was jealous of them as well. They were a constant barrier between her affection and me, soaking it up so there would be nothing left for the son. Walking into their room on a dim day, it seemed as though they knew it, as well. To my childish eyes that were always looking up at them, their perfect, cherubic faces seemed smug at having defeated me in the contest for my mother's love. I thought they must have noticed how much I wanted to hurt them, to dash them to the floor and see their innocent china faces shatter into pieces around me like brain matter across the carpet. I wondered in passing if it was not mother who put them on such high shelves but a conscious decision of their own, to keep themselves safe from me.

And at the same time I was desperate for their company. We were the same, the dolls and I—both of us fragile things to be dressed up and caressed and appreciated from afar, but never truly loved. Like the cherries, I developed a strange relationship with those dolls, one in which each party was wary of its dependency on the other.

Mother forbade me to touch her dolls. Boys could not be trusted with fragile things, she said. They break them. Never mind that my heart was a fragile thing as well, and she could break that without exerting any effort. Every now and then she would take down a doll she found unremarkable, or that could not be broken or ruined as easily as the others, and under her careful supervision I would be allowed to hold it in my hands. As she watched my face for my reaction, she seemed to think that she was doing me some great favor, allowing me to hold, if only for a short while, a treasure. It was as though she wanted me to understand what fascination they held for her, that if I were to awaken to some great truth about the nature of dolls I would understand why she was the way she was and forgive her her deficiencies.

That was one thing I could not do. But as a result I fell in love with the dolls. They had become, ironically, my forbidden fruit. Like a charm, the harsher my mother's insistence I must not, the more I longed to touch and hold them. Perhaps at first I believed by doing so I could absorb some of her affection for them through my skin. After a while it seemed I began to love them as I wished to be loved, and resent them as I resented myself. We were kindred spirits. Their white, round faces with the faintest blossoming of translucent pink held an innocence and purity I was drawn to because in some ways it mirrored my own, just as the perpetual frowns on their tiny lips materialized my loneliness. My wardrobe was carefully laid out for me according to her design, just as theirs were. It was a person like my mother who would do them harm, I came to feel, not me. My mother with her sometimes violent mood swings, her spiteful personality, and her cruelty—how she could love someone one day and the next betray that love for someone better with no more deliberation than one picks a grape from the vine.

In the back of my young mind I feared that same darkness might be lurking in my own heart. I hated her a little for that, because I feared the possibility that I had inherited that trait.

It was only when my mother was away from her quarters that I ventured to visit her collection. My greatest fear, and my greatest excitement, was that she would catch me at it. As though I were touching myself, I felt I would die of shame if that happened, which also had the effect of filling those sessions with a sense of guilt. It was one nutcracker doll in particular called Veronica that had captured my attention. She was dressed for winter in a dark red, ruffled Victorian dress, and a large bonnet covered her brown ringlets. The lines that descended from the corners of her lips made her expression seem one of perpetual sorrow. Mother kept her in an esteemed place, so I began to think that she loved Veronica the most. Whether it was because of this or to spite her, I took to Veronica above all the rest. That doll alone surely understood me.

It must have been inevitable that someday mother would catch me. I was perhaps ten years old. Entering that room looking for Veronica, when I noticed she was gone from her usual place I grew careless. I did not leave the room when I should have.

At first mother flew into a panic, worried for the welfare of her dolls, and drove me away. I was frightened not so much by her outburst, the likes of which I was used to, but by her concern—the mother instinct that she had for these lifeless dolls, but was lacking when it came to her only son—which made me feel as though she had stabbed me in the chest. As though a rope had been cut and I was left floating in the middle of the ocean alone. When she had calmed herself and called for me again, no doubt due to a reprimand from father, I had nothing to do but run back to her and beg her forgiveness. As I said before, I could not bear to lose what little and paltry affection for me she was able to hold in her heart.

Still I wanted to accuse her. I knew she had done something to Veronica, that she had broken or thrown out the doll, even though it was her favorite, because she had found out it had become my favorite as well. How, I do not know, but it must have been something akin to a mother's intuition. I knew the doll's absence was only to spite me, a punishment for my betrayal, for giving my love as she had with me to something besides her.

Though my vision seemed to waver before me through my tears, I asked her what she had done with Veronica, but she did not answer. I was surprised when instead she praised _me_, and touched my face and coddled me like one of her dolls—as if she had never seen me before. It was not uncommon for her to act so inconsistently, as though a veil had been lifted from before her eyes for the first time. But the sheer wickedness of the smile that accompanied it chilled me as few of her violent fits had before.

Even now I remember vividly the movement of those lips reddened with lipstick behind her wild, wavy hair. As she held my face firmly in her hands like the jaws of a trap and crooned, "Such a good child," she compared my hair to the moon, and my eyes to the surface of a lake that reflects it, and my skin. . . . Of course, she compared my skin to that of her porcelain dolls. I could not tear my gaze away from that terrible smile that seemed to be battling with her mind and holding back the less proper thoughts that were in it. I could see in that smile that she wanted to hurt me. My own mother, overcome by the sudden realization of my beauty, knowing no other outlet to express it, wanted to hurt me.

Suddenly the way she stroked my hair and my shoulders and kissed my face repulsed me. Even then I felt something wrong in it, something incestuous. I pushed away from her and stumbled back. Hardly aware I was doing it, as if in denial of these frightening new sensations, I continued to accuse her of taking Veronica away, but she did not hear me. I was the best of her collection, she said, and spoke my name like it was a praiseworthy doll's. At those words, such a horror came over me that my legs refused to move and I could do nothing but entreat her, Why had she taken Veronica away?

Why had she betrayed me?

Because that was what it was really about. Betrayal. That doll was only one aspect of it. One manifestation to which my young mind forced itself to relate, out of abject fear of confronting the alternative.

No one spoke of that incident. To no one but myself was it anything out of the ordinary where my mother was concerned. But I could not trust her after that—after being touched in that manner, and hearing the words directly from her lips: I was her most prized doll. I could not allow her to do such things that once seemed commonplace as picking out my clothes, or bringing me a refreshment as I sat on the veranda, nor could I even at that tender age change without feeling a need to look over my shoulder. My baths were taken in a constant state of alert as I feared she might take as much interest in the rest of my body that was just beginning to develop. Can you imagine what torment that is, to be unable to trust the very person who gave you life?

—

Grandfather passed away the year I entered middle school, and the old files from his decades of practice were handed down to my father. He stored them in a corner of his office in piles of boxes until he would be able to go through them one by one and decide which to destroy and a suitable place for those to keep. Unlike my mother, who scolded me, Father took a certain amount of pleasure in it when I showed interest in his line of work and offered to help. In fact, at that time it was nothing more than a curiosity, but even that allowed him to boast to his colleagues that medicine ran in our family's veins, and to believe the tradition would be carried at least into the next generation. And so he did not forbid me from looking by myself through old files that were no longer sensitive, whose patients had died decades before: cases from the thirties and forties, from the war and what followed. Some even went back as far as the Taisho period, when grandfather had still been in medical school, working as an assistant.

The oldest files were what interested me most, just as grainy silent films hold a mysterious appeal, as though they were something from a far more distant time than they actually are. The yellowed papers and photographs had a certain gritty feel to them, from dust or their own deterioration, the boxes and folders a certain musty smell like that of a museum. I could not read the more complex and technical character combinations then, which lent the experience of studying the old charts a surreal flavor. They were sacred texts to me, whose cryptic language had been lost in the sands of time.

And who were the strangers in the photographs, I wondered. Souls staring with blank eyes from the realm of hungry ghosts where they might now wander restless, some of them with sinister maladies that malformed their body parts in ghastly ways. The twisted spines of scoliosis patients that reminded me of the tortured cherry trunks. Skin diseases that made the flesh turn hard and white, or decay in raw patches. Tumors that distended their stomachs unnaturally, their necks, their skulls and genitals. After those curiosities came the victims of the war whose injuries, that should have proved fatal, healed in monstrous ways, and of the bombing of Tokyo, missing eyes and limbs, and of Nagasaki, who looked like the Hedora glimpsed on a movie house poster, their skin charred and slick and hanging off the muscle.

Some part of me was thrilled by a morbid curiosity deep inside even at the most gruesome pictures. The suffering, so distant from my own experience, was somehow beautiful in its ugliness, as though nature had chosen those individuals as its canvasses for its Cubist phase. Imagining the pain their diseases and injuries must have inflicted pulled at a corner of my heart, and sometimes at my stomach, in the form of a strangely pleasant nausea, and at other parts of my body not yet fully awakened.

There was one photograph that did this better than all the rest, whose subject was not ugly at all and yet not beautiful either. On the contrary, he was far beyond any mundane notion of beauty. The photograph seemed to have lain in wait like a snare for me to step carelessly into. I must admit I was given a start when I opened one of these old folders, one older than the rest, a portfolio in fact that lay flattened and forgotten in the bottom of a bin as though purposefully buried, and came face to face with its patient. I do believe my heart stopped in my chest for a few seconds, and I could not breathe. Nor could I tear my eyes from those that held mine out of time unwittingly, and so strongly. The photograph was of the most striking person I had ever seen.

The patient was a man in his mid-twenties with dark hair cut for the slicked-back style of those days and well-formed features. He was on the thin side and pale, which I took to be the result of some wasting illness. His collarbone and the hollow of his throat—a perfectly formed neck I could almost see moving as he swallowed dryly—stood out in relief where his robe lay loosened to expose them. One eye was curiously bandaged; I grew excited as I imagined what the reason for that could be. The other. . . .

There was something strange about it I could not put my finger on, something about the tone in the black and white photograph that seemed wrong to the subconscious. Grandfather's notes said the patient had purple eyes, an impossible color, but even with that knowledge it was difficult for me to picture. It was pleasing, anyway, with its frame of dark lashes and heavy lids. Taken together with his parted lips, which had a classical shape, he seemed to be in the throes of ecstasy. Or else just spent, stretched out beneath some invisible lover. The way his hair lay against the pillow, the angle of his pose. . . .

There was something extremely seductive in his manner, and I knew it to be what it was: sheer agony. I marveled at him, because while the attraction of others was hidden in their monstrosities and the revulsion they induced, here was one whose beauty and sadness could not possibly be diminished. A cut to his pale skin would only increase the pathos he aroused. As Seneca once wrote, "Here is a thing which is too great, too sublime for anyone to regard it as being in the same category as that puny body it inhabits." Yet, I worshiped that puny body as well. I was filled with awe, and a strange desire for him, but I did not know the nature of that desire. His pain, physical and emotional, must have been so great to drive him to the trance-like state he possessed in the picture, reminding me of the ecstasy of saints whose images were to be found in every coffee table art book. He was Sebastian bound by invisible restraints and pierced by a thousand microscopic arrows.

Gazing at his image, I too felt like I had been pierced. There was a tremendous pain in my chest that quickly spread to my groin, and in between gave me such a queer sensation I doubled over with a combination of fear and excitement. I did not know what was wrong with me then. My breath came short, and my blood vessels opened and I felt warm in my limbs. I felt as though I would explode. With admiration, and desire, and envy and shame and love—but how could I have known that then?

I experienced my first orgasm gazing at his picture. At the time I did not know exactly what it was. We were at an age when the boys at school had begun to obsess over those kinds of bodily functions, but not one of them could give you a good explanation of what they were if you were to ask him. What I did know was that it felt immeasurably good, and that I wanted to feel it again. And even then I knew guilt.

I saved the file and the journal that had also been inside the portfolio. No one would have noticed if it was disposed of forever with the other files that had become irrelevant. I could not allow that to happen, for this strange and beautiful man's memory to be lost forever. So it faded into obscurity in my bedroom, wedged between books on the shelf I thought no one would think of reading. And at night, when that same curiosity came to gnaw at me again, in dark and silence, I would take down that file and open it clandestinely. I cannot be sure if it was that I was afraid that someone would catch me that I hesitated, or whether in my young mind the act felt akin to sacrilege. I would spend long stretches of time simply staring at that picture and memorizing his features, his expression, until I could swear he breathed in my thoughts. Then I would return the file to its place on the bookshelf and climb into bed.

However, his image would not leave the darkness behind my eyelids, and I could not sleep with the erection it had produced. Innocent as I was, I touched myself beneath my bed clothes and learned to bring myself to climax. Even though I say I was innocent, I must have recognized something sinful in my behavior, for I guarded the secret of those late nights as though my life depended on it.

This act I came to associate with the man in the photograph. However, it was not a homosexual act. To me at that time it was hardly a sexual act at all. At first I resisted when his image came to my mind as I masturbated. I felt guilty for polluting him somehow, as though my lonely act could harm a person who had been dead for several decades. That guilt faded as I slowly became accustomed to the two occurring together. One might have christened it a conditioned response. When I first saw his picture and became aroused, a connection was forever formed in my mind. But no matter what one wishes to call it, all I knew was that it felt only natural deep within my heart.

—

That was the summer of my life. It was like a dream of sunshine, as short as a summer night, those few years between the naivety of childhood and the disillusionment of adulthood that I tried unsuccessfully to recapture throughout the rest of my life. I only catch a glimpse, in the changing of the seasons that pass too quickly, of a time I lived in blissful ignorance of myself and the world around me, and thought I knew everything.

The realization of everything's transience brings such pain, even to my thirteen-year-old mind. Standing beside my grandfather's grave with its headstone still shiny and new, and watching the incense smoke curl up into the air and dissipate, I was first struck by this eternal truth.

Likewise, a flower arrangement in early summer causes the heart to ache for its beauty, because one knows that it is only temporary and will soon wilt. Outside, the opened irises are pounded by the rains and droop on their slender stalks under the onslaught. Inside, the cut buds are thrown out before they can open their petals.

They fascinated me then, as though grandfather's death and my discoveries among his files had caused the proverbial scales to fall from my eyes. They fascinated me so much so that I've looked forward to the irises' first arrival every May, just as faithfully as I am surprised by the cherries' blooming every March. They are most inspiring in the bud stage, the irises, right before opening. The black and white and violet petals, veined and twisted together into a long, perfect cone, are rather suggestive of a phallus in the way they overlap the calyx slightly. The ruffle at the top on which a bead of dew seems to levitate promises something wonderful when it finally opens, as though the door that leads to wisdom has been left cracked.

It grated on my nerves, the impatience that came with waiting to see what would be revealed in the exact moment of unfolding. And I almost think the irises knew it, for they always chose the most unlikely time to open, always a moment when I chanced to turn away, so that I was never able to see it happening.

However, when they had finally bloomed, it was a disappointment every time. The colors that were now brilliant like jewels and the delicately balanced shape were splendid for but a moment. Then, as though they were simply too much, the eye got used to their pretentiousness and had enough. Better was the tightly wrapped bud with all its secrecy still intact, for only when it was no more did I understand how gladly I would rather throw those blossoms out unrealized than see that pure state tarnished and ended in such a flagrant manner.

Is it wrong for something to die so early in its life, before it can even reach its full potential? At the height of its beauty, although it tries so hard for some insignificant, impossible goal? Grandfather's patient whose eyes must have been the color of those iris buds passed away when he was twenty-six, at his physical peak and at the peak of his suffering. It was pitiful that he had to leave the world without his visage with nothing to commemorate his existence but an old black and white photograph, but at the same time, was his departure not, in its own way, perfect?

This would become the theme of my life, though I could not have realized then how central it would prove to all my relationships. As my summer declined, one by one I felt the things I had never known how to appreciate slip away from me. First my innocence, then my freedom, and finally my own family.

—

I shall never forget the day a devil's child came to shatter our already fragile lives.

Of course, that revelation came only in hindsight. For the time being I knew not how to begin to feel. He was the half-brother I had never known until that day when he was brought into my home.

Growing up, I had long thought my father to be the moral anchor of our household—a rational patriarch who governed everything by the scientific method. As it turned out, I really did not know my father at all. For the first fifteen years of my life I never suspected that he might have been supporting another child on the side. Looking back, however, I wonder if my mother did. I do not remember any fits of outrage regarding the affair, but I do remember the look on her face when she heard we would have a new addition to the household. "So, the witch has finally died," she said, and grinned as though in triumph. This statement was a mystery to me at the time. I thought she might be referring to an aunt or distant cousin. My father pretended not to hear.

I saw the black town car pull up to our drive, and though no one had told me what to expect, I had a sinking feeling of dread in my gut. It was not the last time I would feel something to that effect. We seemed to have a mental connection, my half-brother and I, as though we were actually twins from the same womb.

For that reason I wanted to avoid seeing him and making his presence here real. I did not see him get out of the car. The advantage of this neutral first impression was lost to me forever. Yet my feet carried me against my will to the foyer where I saw my father standing on the flagstone with his arm around a boy my age in a cold, uncomfortable embrace. Behind them, the driver was removing luggage from the trunk of the car. I remember focusing on that, and the bright green immature maple leaves in the background, until my father's voice broke my stare and forced me to face the present.

"Kazutaka," he said, "this is your older brother, Shido Saki. He'll be living with us from now on."

That was all. No one could say the old man was sensitive to the feelings of others. (I wonder if his kind of bedside manner was actually appreciated among his patients, or was it just his family he treated this way?) This was the first I had heard of the matter, and there had been no warning to soften the blow to my young and selfish pride that had been content to believe I was unique.

Looking at this boy now completely deflated my ego: it was like looking at my reflection in a mirror. Perhaps it is more accurate to say it was like gazing into the mirrors at fairs that twist one's features out of perspective, turning them into something grotesque. But he was not grotesque. He was rather handsome. His hair was an ashy brown, his eyes a deep, muddy blue color like the impenetrable surface of a lake, and his features gave the impression of a person who was always charming, and yet always false—so much the opposite of my meek and fair appearance.

Yet something about him was familiar. Something besides the ubiquitous black school uniform we both wore. I could read nothing from this boy my father called Saki, my older brother. I had only the feeling of being small as he looked down at me—even though it was I who stood on the landing.

He chuckled rather amiably, and said simply, with none of my awkwardness, "A pleasure, Kazutaka."

My conditioning caused me to treat him politely, but meanwhile anger was burning deep inside me. Who was he to invade my home, indeed my life, and regard me so casually, I thought. How could he, this bastard child, allow himself to act with such disrespect toward me, my father's legitimate heir?

If I were honest, however, I would have seen that what I resented most was not Saki but his existence, which was not in his control. I resented what, at the time, was the greatest betrayal I could possibly imagine. I resented that on the same day I was conceived, mere hours before the gametes that would become myself could meet, my father had impregnated his own patient who was then undergoing treatment for a mental disorder. For that I could never forgive him. It was not even that he had breached the ethics of his profession, for which I could care less in those days. Indeed, I realized, everything he had been to me had been a lie. He had betrayed me, his loyal and true son, who had only done the best in his power to honor him, with this souvenir of his adultery by inviting it into our home so matter-of-factly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do. He had made a fool of my mother, and he made a fool of me.

The thought filled me with such an overwhelming sense of shame, I felt the heat rise to my cheeks and was afraid that Saki would see my discomfort. Somehow I managed to keep my composure in front of him.

Though everything I was resisted, I resolved to treat Saki with the respect that was expected of me to give my brother, older if only by a handful of hours. As the days passed and I grew used to his presence, I tried to speak easily with him. I tried to think of him as my own flesh and blood, however much I was repulsed by the fact. And, in fact, it was a difficult thing to will myself to do, having believed myself an only child for so long. Every now and then I would be consumed by an irrational fear when the notion that he could take the place allotted me when father died hit me with all its reality, but I pushed it from my mind and told myself that was decades in the future: we would be grown men before then. I thought that reason would triumph unquestionably, my father's duties to me would not be surpassed by some senseless, guilty sense of obligation, and that life would go on in our household as it always had.

And instead of hating Saki, who, I eventually convinced myself, was an innocent by-product of the affair, I turned my blame on my father and his philanderous impulses.

May God forgive me my stupidity.

—

The year was 1979. We were first-years in high school, Saki and I. And, during that year at least, against my initial resolve, we became close. We behaved toward one another more like friends than brothers, but can we be blamed for the lost first fifteen years of our relationship?

We walked to school together, and walked home separately. I had always kept to myself when it came to my academic life and that did not change when I entered high school. I had a few friends to whom I did not feel particularly close nor felt any particular need to grow closer. Saki, on the other hand, soon drew a following, and often went out after class with the boys and girls who were branded delinquents by our professors for smoking and listening to punk music. It seemed quite incongruous to see him, always so polished and proper, commanding their attention. In a way I cannot explain except to say it may have been something like envy, it broke my heart.

He always made it up to me, though. He brought home records from his ritual weekly treks to the record store, eccentricities among rock and rhythm-and-blues, with suggestive covers and androgynous players layered with dyed hair and make-up. Father forbade almost anything that was not classical or enka, as much for mother's sensibilities as for his own personal tastes; so when he was out of the house and mother was shut up in her room, we pulled the records out from under Saki's bed, put them on the turntable and listened to them through one at a time, the volume low and our ears to the speakers, or sharing one pair of headphones, our eyes on the lyrics in the liner notes—often English that we could not understand well but found brilliant nonetheless.

Those were the days, stretched out on the living room rug, that I completely forgot the animosity toward Saki I once thought I would hold in my heart forever. Though at school we acted as though we hardly knew each other, shrugging nonchalantly as someone reacted with surprise to learn we were brothers, at home our camaraderie blossomed despite all expectations. The one school activity we both had an avid interest in was kendo, so when I joined the high school's club, so did he. Though he won our bouts more often than not, our competitive spirit was rarely dampened by hostility or resentment, and this carried over into other aspects of our life as well. Cooking somehow became a competition. Walks turned into races. Our daily activities were ruled by a good-natured one-up-manship.

In our social life, he was a bad influence. Always one to behave with the utmost respect among father's visiting colleagues, even to the point of being taken by one for an agoraphobic, with Saki's tacit goading I became an intellectual smart-ass, rolling my extensive reserve vocabulary in sarcasm and capping his cleverly opaque antisocial charm with what was in Saki's words, exquisite crass. Surprisingly, guests took this change in my behavior as a change for the better. Another sign that deep down I did have the family knack for medicine.

We would laugh about it afterward.

Then he would turn to me and say without a trace of that good humor, "Don't believe a word of that crap," and suddenly I no longer felt like laughing. "They want you to think it would be good for you, following in father's footsteps. But that's the biggest lie of all—to make you sign your soul away to the social beast. Like going to university. Sit down and take this exam, pay your dues, and just like that—" He snapped his fingers. "Kazutaka's gone. You'll never see him again. Just another ubiquitous 'sensei' to take his place. Hunch-backed, balding, and chronically bored."

But I planned on attending university. If not to become a doctor, then because that was simply what I must do. What other option was there, for someone of my upbringing? And who did he think he was fooling, if he thought he wouldn't go himself?

He shook his head slowly. I wasn't getting it. "The world wasn't made for people like us, Kazutaka. Some day you'll wake up and understand that. And when you do, who is going to have your back?"

The answer was he. Because it would be us against the world. Saki never said it in so many words, of course, but we were different from the other boys and girls our age. Once they realized that they would never let us back in their fold, so therefore we had to stick together. We had no other choice.

Yet although Saki opened me up, I still felt incompetent next to him among our classmates, both male and female. The one time I repeated one of his typical observations to Ukyo, my ego was inflated knowing she would think I had come up with something so brilliant myself, she would not speak to me for days and regarded me some time after with wariness.

She was not the only one revolted by the changes. "That devil is corrupting our child," I overheard mother complaining to father one evening after supper. Then she adjusted her thoughts to specify: "_My_ child. He fills his head with morbid and improper thoughts."

Surely you're over-reacting, father said. Mother had two strikes against her credibility as it was, the way he saw it: her psychosis, and her womanhood.

"But you see it, don't you? When you have those men from the university over for dinner, you must see it! The way he talks back . . . oh, the things that come out of his mouth. . . . _My_ Kazutaka would never act like that. Like he was some savage's child. I know my boy. That is not how I raised him. That is not my Kazutaka. He has been . . ." Her sophisticated features twisted up at the thought of that word, that hurt her to say more than anything else: "_Damaged._

"I want that monster out of my house!"

I turned to Saki then. There struck me as being something dangerous about the situation, being there with Saki as he heard those words issue from my mother's mouth. I thought for sure he must hate her as much as she hated him. That thought did not settle well with me, although rationally I could not blame him if he did. Mother never apologized for her feelings.

Instead, however, Saki just grinned, as though what she had said were a compliment, and seemed completely amused.

"Don't you resent it?" he said to me one day. I did not catch his meaning, so I asked him what I was supposed to resent.

"The way she treats you. Like you were some fragile doll or something I'm gonna break and lower the value of."

I wondered at his choice of words, and whether he knew how close to the mark they were. I remembered the looks he shot my mother, when father was out of the room and she would caress my hair in that possessive way, at once shaming me and seeming to warn Saki.

"It doesn't matter," he said when I could not give him a satisfactory answer. "Forget I said it. Look. That bird's been making a ruckus all afternoon." He nodded to indicate something further back in the garden that I did not see. "It's really beginning to annoy me. What kind do you suppose it is?"

"I don't know."

"Well, how about that bird book I always see in your room? It must be in there," Saki said and pushed himself to his feet.

I was ambivalent for a moment, then a sense of panic struck me as I remembered. "Don't," I said, and recognizing the desperation in my voice, quickly revised: "Don't bother. It probably won't be in there."

He stopped and stared at me as though I were daft. Then, slowly, the amused smile I had grown used to that seemed to know my deepest secrets returned to his features with what I could only term a malicious twist. "That's okay," he said in a lower voice. "I'll just check anyway." And he turned to go toward my room.

I hurried up and ran to stop him, but somehow he beat me there. My protests fell on his deaf ears—no, on second thought, they must have only encouraged him as he reached for the book on the shelf, all the while assuring me it would be no trouble at all.

I watched with the detached sense of clarity of a condemned man as he pulled the book down from the shelf. Just as I had predicted, the folder which held the file on grandfather's patient was dragged along with it, and fell to the floor, spilling its contents like an opening fan. Embarrassed, my mind swimming as the blood rushed hot to my face and armpits, I dove for the contents; but as he bent down in his calm and unhurried way, Saki beat me to even that. Taking the photograph in his free hand and examining it closely, he asked no one in particular, "Oh, what's this?"

"It's nothing. Give it back." I made a grab for the picture.

He moved it out of my reach so that I would have had to lean over him to retrieve it. "It can't be just anyone, to be wedged in a such an inconspicuous place. Is this why you didn't want me to get the book?"

Ashamed, I said nothing. His expression, which had turned serious with the discovery of the photograph, was cruel as he turned his scrutinizing eyes upon me. I did not have to answer. He could read my soul.

"Oh, so that's it. That's why you didn't want me to find out. You're in love with this person, aren't you? With this _man_." He laughed at me, with the same insolent chuckle as when we first met. "Is that why you keep it there? So no one will find out what kind of person you really are? My, Kazutaka . . . I had no idea you were like _that_. But don't worry. I won't tell anyone. It'll be our secret and ours alone. Okay?"

I felt the first seeds of what would become a frightfully deep sense of mistrust then. Selfishly, I feared he would tell someone of this and my comfortable life as I had carefully built it would end. I feared that I would become even more of a pariah at school because of it. Worse yet, I feared that mother, so disgusted with my sinful thoughts, and with my longing for that nameless person, would take the photograph away and destroy it, just as she had Veronica. Then the vital presence of grandfather's patient would be lost to me forever. It would be as if he had never existed, and eventually the memory of his image I held in my mind would also fade. And I feared that Saki's knowledge would taint the purity of that person and of my thoughts toward him.

Saki must have seen the displeasure on my face for he quickly said, in a manner much more amiable than that he had used just moments before: "Gee, Kazutaka, you don't have to look so upset. I didn't mean it. I was only giving you a bad time. Why would someone like you have those kind of sick thoughts anyway?"

He handed the photograph back to me, aggravating me once more by faking to tear it away from me again before finally placing the folder with its contents restored in my hand.

I was startled by the change I had witnessed come over him. In those few minutes, Saki seemed like two completely different people. Yet, wanting to cling to the good standing we had with one another, as though if I did not some terrible imbalance would befall our household, I dismissed his behavior as a temporary lapse into the resentment that it must have been only natural for him to harbor toward me, our father's legitimate son, and I told myself to think nothing more of it.

Because of that, I cannot say when exactly the change occurred. Like my mother's psychosis, it too must have increased gradually until I arrived at a time I could no longer imagine that such idyllic days as I first described ever existed in waking reality. I grew more skeptical of Saki with each passing day. Like scales being slowly peeled from my eyes, I began to have serious doubts about the sincerity of his geniality toward me. Whether there had been something truly sarcastic in his eyes all along, or whether that was something new or entirely my own creation, I cannot say. I only knew that once the feeling of unease crept into my heart it stayed put and would not budge except to make me feel ashamed for regarding my own half-brother, whom everyone in my father's circle believed to be an angel, with suspicion.

I tried to like Saki. As I said before, I felt it was my duty as a brother, if only by one parent, and an unfaithful one at that. However, the better I got to know Saki, the harder I found that to do.

—

As a young boy, I was fascinated by how living things worked. How I could have denied my destiny to become a doctor for so long remains a mystery to me. Ever since when I was six or seven my aging grandfather helped me mount my first butterfly, and showed me how to capture a bee inside a glass with sealing paper so that it droned like a pipe organ, that seed of interest had been gestating within me, waiting for the right conditions to make it sprout. Watching spiders fall haplessly into the pond in the backyard and struggle to free themselves from the water, I was reminded of the part chance played in the fragility of life, how one small, seemingly insignificant misstep could spell one's demise. It took a long time for the spiders to drown. Even to the last they clung to some false hope they might escape. Still, nature ran its course. It never occurred to me I might have been just as responsible for their deaths by failing to help them.

One morning in the careless days of summer, I spied a lizard warming itself on a flagstone in the garden. I wondered if it were dead, the way it just sat there seeming not to move, or if it would run away if I startled it. If I threw a rock at it perhaps. And I wondered if I would actually be able to hit it from where I sat. I didn't think so. But spurred by my curiosity, I took a shot anyway. As though outside myself I saw the rock hit, and blood spurt up from a head wound. It was an incredibly lucky shot. The lizard must have died instantly. I was stunned that I could have taken its life on such a childish whim, and yet at the same time, its crumpled corpse fascinated me.

Now I shared my home and my class with Saki. As the months dragged on, I began to see a side of him that was new to me. Boys who had survived on cheap, harmless thrills in middle school now had a new direction for their violence. Setting fire to cats' whiskers or shooting tacks through straws at stray dogs. How barbaric, Saki would remark to the air before us as he caught sight of them in the schoolyard, but the same cruel fascination would be shining clearly in his eyes as he said it.

It was present in biology as well, as he watched single-celled organisms burst and leak out their organelles under a microscope, or created his macabre works of art. Even the professor could not turn away from the frog that lay crucified on its platter, its skin pinned back in flaps, intestines carefully pulled out and lined up beside its body as though in accordance with some dark ritual of mummification. Its tiny heart was too far up in the chest to see, but by the slow inflation of the throat we were sure that if it were visible, we would see it beating. With an intense expression on his brow, Saki took down the measurements of its vitals although it was beyond the scope of the assignment, removed one by one until the specimen gave up its life. For this they said surely he was his father's son.

Our professors must have known what anguish it caused me to hear those words uttered in my presence. They must have said it with just that purpose. His father's son. . . . Saki may have been my father's son, and he may have been conceived and delivered before I could be, but then perhaps it was even true that his morbid fascinations were cut from the same cloth as father's adulterous behavior. If he were that man's son, what did that make me? It was at times such as those I would recall the stirrings the photographs of grandfather's patients caused in myself years ago, and fear that we were not so different as I had wanted to believe—that our father's genetic material remained an inescapable bond between us that could neither be denied nor altered, even should he die.

I caught Saki one late-winter morning in '80 as I arrived early to school, before the freshly fallen snow could be disturbed by students' tracks, holding a small bird that had fallen from its nest cradled in his gloved hands. "She's beautiful, isn't she?" he said to me. "I can feel her heart beating against my hands. It's so warm."

His voice, as always, was painstakingly soft. Looking at his hands wrapped tenderly around it, his thumb caressing its wings every now and then, one might have thought Saki was a boy of infinite compassion. The bird, however, was shaking violently. Its black, bead-like eyes were glazed over and blinked frequently in pain. That would have been understandable from a fall, but the more I stared into them the more I saw a gut-wrenching fear and desperation that could not have been explained so simply.

Until then I had been more concerned with how he had beat me to school. The purity of the white landscape around us became suddenly too much to bear and seemed to tilt around me. I asked him, "What are you doing to it?"

"She was lying on the ground when I found her. Must have flown into a window or something."

"Let it go. You're hurting it."

"What do you mean?" He looked hurt at my accusation, yet the longer I stood there the more I became convinced he was the reason behind the bird's pain. Saki's brows furrowed and his gaze dropped to the bird, and I saw it struggle in his grasp. "You don't like it, Kazutaka?"

I understood then he was not trying to help the poor animal. He would not have known how. He was offering its life to me. As though to say, You're the doctor's son: you save it. His disappointment was more satisfaction than anything else, seeming to hide an almost sexual longing to prove me incompitent. He was waiting for me to decide whether it would live or die. Nor was it just the bird to which he seemed to be referring when he said, "It should probably be put out of its misery."

I told him to give the bird to me, which he did gladly. But I had not seen where it had come from, and I was forced to leave it in a sheltered place outside when it was time for class to begin. When we left to go home that day, the other boys pointed out a dead bird lying on the pavement. It had frozen to death, even as the blossoms were on the plums. It had frozen to death because I could not help it. Its pitch black eyes were half open, staring at nothing, but I felt its hopelessness bore into me like a failed warning. I could not meet Saki's eyes as we walked home together, knowing I would find them taunting me. Even his words of comfort—"It couldn't be helped. It had a broken wing"—sounded condemning to my ears.

Before Saki came I had been involved in a small literature club after school. Recently it had lost interest for me. But more than that, I hated to arrive home after him, when I would be forced to pass by his room on the way to my own. I relished the days he stayed out late into the afternoon, and I had peace until his knock came outside my door announcing his return. On those other days, if he saw me sneaking by, he would ask pointlessly, "Did you just get back?" and give me that knowing look I had come to dread and loath so deeply. If I tried to walk by without greeting him, he would point out my rudeness: "What, too busy to say hello to your brother?" "Brother," naturally, would be emphasized; he would never let me forget it, what my father had done. What I had become consequently.

When I arrived in my room at last, I shut the door and breathed a sigh of relief. There, in all the house, when I could no longer stand being friendly with him, I could believe I was safe from Saki. I could believe this was still my home, and that I was not some unwanted guest in it, my every move scrutinized by that bastard child who slept down the hall. Of course, as I said, I tried to love him, and back then I even did, but I could not help hating him as well simply for what he was.

I spread out my school books and promptly lost myself in my studies. When I finished a subject, I felt drowsy and lay down on my back on the bed and closed my eyes. As though in a dream I heard the sliding of the door on its track, and a fragrance drifted toward me not unlike lilac blossoms out of season. I breathed it in. It contented me. Then the mattress shifted beneath me as it depressed by my side. My curiosity quickly grew to alarm, and I opened my eyes just as a hand clamped over my mouth. Above, I found those muddy blue eyes boring into me, mocking me.

"Shh. . . . Kazutaka. . . ." Saki's voice was gentle, reassuring, but those eyes were anything but. His grip was strong and his arm across my chest pinned me down as well, but his skin and his breath were soft and warm, alluring. His nose nearly brushed against mine, he was so close. I froze. I was too stunned by his proximity to know what else to do. One of his knees was between my legs, a fact I realized reluctantly. Later I asked myself why I did not simply push him away, or knee him in the groin, and saved myself the anguish of what was to come. The way he was, he would have left me alone after that. But I did nothing.

"Don't be afraid," he whispered. "I wouldn't hurt my own brother." If he sincerely hoped his words would comfort me in the slightest, however, he was delusional. Even as he said them, I felt his other hand caressing my body, first over, and then under my uniform. He unzipped my trousers, and slid his hand inside. He began to stroke me. He was cruel enough to ask, "You like this, don't you?"

The sensation was overwhelming, the combination of disgust and visceral pleasure more than I could bear, compounded by the knowledge that he was my own flesh and blood. I shut my eyes tight. Still I saw him smiling at me victoriously, the image as though burned onto my retinas. Knowing _I_ was the subject of his experiment, the object of his curiosity, I yearned to retreat inside myself and pretend his touch did not affect me like it did. But it was too late. He held me down harder as I shuddered, perhaps afraid I would cry out and one of the maids would hear. He shushed me like one does an infant. I could hear the panting of my own breath against his hand. He wiped the ejaculate from the other on the bedspread, clucking his tongue as though he pitied me. "Poor Kazutaka." He grinned. "You're not going to cry, are you? No, of course not. You're such a good boy."

He sounded like my mother, and he must have known it, as he said softly to me, mockingly: "Such a lovely doll."

He replaced the hand over my mouth with his lips, and suddenly I had the strange feeling that he was sucking the breath from my lungs. When he pushed his tongue into my mouth, I bit down. He jerked back, and the coppery taste of blood filled my mouth. As he jumped up from the bed, I was struck by how ordinary he looked in that moment, and shocked, as if _I_ were the one who had attacked _him_. He covered his mouth as he tore open the door, and his footsteps thumped down the hall to the bathroom.

I remember wishing he had bled to death, although that was never what I truly intended. If I had, I would have bitten him harder, and been alone again thereafter.

The odd thing is nothing changed between us after that. He treated me with the same condescending amiability he always had, and I played along like a fool, too cowardly to do otherwise. It was to us as though that episode had never happened.

Then came the reoccurring dreams that visited me after the incident, involving Saki and myself in various sexual situations, as though to remind me we had not finished what he had started. They were never very clear, typically shrouded in darkness, but still vivid enough sensation-wise so that I would often wake up with an erection, or even during or shortly after ejaculation, leading me to worry that I might also have cried out as I sometimes did in the dream. It was difficult to tell what was real and what was my imagination while the mind still clung to its dream state, in the early hours of morning; and if I weren't fully clothed and alone in my room when I was awakened, I would have thought they were real.

Those episodes would fill me with shame, for they left me lusting after Saki against my will. The feelings experienced in the dream would resurface at the most inappropriate times: on the train to school, in the classroom, at a meaningful look across the dinner table. The way he looked at me now frightened me to my very soul, because he knew my secret—not just what we had shared, what he had done to me, but my private thoughts and dreams. He knew about my innermost carnal desires for my half-brother, just as he seemed to know without my telling how I regarded grandfather's patient, and he knew how much said desires tortured and disgusted me. I feared every day he would confront me about them—that he would try to act them out once more. I feared that I half wished he would. And I feared he might try to hurt me, though that fear was only a looming pretense of real fear, merely a hunch, not grounded in reality and, in fact, unattached to any future occurrence.

—

Then father's health began to decline. It was in the fall of that year, the second year of Saki's stay with us. Like the sense of foreboding that had penetrated the eaves of the house of late, it was gradual—so gradual none of us saw it until it was too late. As though it were the way of doctors to do so, he hid his illness from us well, while continuing to treat the ails of others. He never complained of any pain or hesitated in his movements. Perhaps he truly felt no change in his condition at all. What was evident, however, was the loss of weight, and the tiredness that he chocked up to work, which he seemed to occupy himself with more of late. They were the kind of symptoms that, had we been born in the distant past, a monk would have diagnosed as demonic influence—some hungry ghost with a vendetta sucking out his life's energy. But we were born in the twentieth century, and he was a man of science. None of us even noticed, until on a hot and humid day in late August he collapsed.

That was the first time a doctor outside our family stepped foot in our household on business. After he spoke with father privately for a while, we were told heatstroke exacerbated by stress from the office was to blame, and that father needed to drink more water, eat better, and take things a little easier from now on to prevent it from happening again. Though it was obvious to anyone with eyes to see, the doctor said nothing about the fact father appeared to be slowly wasting away.

But, reassured by the doctor's words, mother and I pushed the truth that was in front of us from our minds and urged father to eat such and such as the doctor had suggested while we enjoyed normal dinners, and to drink a glass of water for his health whenever we suspected he had forgotten, as he was wont to do, claiming the entire matter was nothing. At those times, Saki remained silent, and smiled fondly to himself as he sat at the table, as though at some joke none of the rest of us could hear.

Thanks to our pestering, father's condition began to improve and he even gained back some weight. A month passed, and then before long it was the middle of October. Then one Sunday he complained of a shortness of breath, in a sudden outburst charged mother with keeping a stuffy house, and went out to the veranda for some fresh air. The next thing we knew, he had fallen with a crash into the garden, landing hard on a patch of gravel. We rushed him to the hospital, where the same doctor at last noted father's weakened state and bound his chest for cracked ribs. He would have to stay in bed for several weeks, we were told, and going to the office for work was out of the question.

However, aside from the injury from the fall, the doctor could find nothing wrong with him. Suspicious, he ran various tests, examining father thoroughly, but to no avail. His lungs were clear, his liver and kidneys functioning normally, and there was no sign of heart disease. Nor was there any sign of cancer the doctor could detect, which came as a relief to my father, who had watched his own father slowly eaten up by the disease. He was, we were assured, in good health. There was no reason to keep him for observation. The doctor said father was merely exhausted and sent us all home; but though we said nothing aloud to one another, I could tell neither mother nor Saki believed that diagnosis any more than I did. Keep him on his strict diet and have him get plenty of rest. That was the solution on which we would have to rely.

Though he had seemed ambivalent before, it came as a surprise to me when it was Saki who constantly volunteered to tend to father's needs—making sure father was comfortable, that he was not straining himself physically, and that he had the patient files sent over by his colleagues when he asked for them. He made sure that father kept hydrated, and was taking the medications that the doctor suggested at the assigned times. While the rest of the household began to worry, when the healing process did not seem to be taking the expected length of time, about its financial well-being, Saki seemed more carefree than ever. Either he had remarkable faith that father would fully recover, or the prospect of losing the large house and our extravagant way of living—hypothetical at this point though it was—simply did not concern him.

I could not but suspect what motives might be behind the care Saki suddenly showed father, after all his talk about he and I being alone in this world, unable to trust any adult. Could it have been a sense of guilt that guided him, I wondered. Was this to make up for the small bit of gratitude father had shown him as a child, sending regular checks to his mother? Or was there some more spiteful motive? During those times he spent alone with father, was he secretly scheming for a larger inheritance, hoping father would remember Saki's attentiveness during his moment of need once he had recovered—even going so far as to turn father's heart against me, the second-born son?

Though I worried about this, I certainly never expected father to die. No one did.

I stepped out of my room one morning and knew instantly that things would never go back to the way they were. Everyone had gathered in the hallway that led to father's room, yet the house was strangely quiet, as though by a conscious effort of those standing there not to make a sound. The maids spoke in hushed tones to one another so that I could not hear what they said. Our butler, Sakaki, had a hand on the shoulder of my mother, who clutched an embroidered handkerchief to the breast of her housecoat but otherwise looked completely numb, like when she was having one of her deeper fits of depression. None of them noticed my presence.

I went to Saki instead, who glanced up at me out of the corner of his eye as he sat at the table and solemnly ate the breakfast prepared by the maids—apparently before they had been distracted. "What happened?" I asked him.

"Father's gone," he said simply—so simply I could not comprehend the meaning of what he had said.

"What do you mean, gone?"

"He passed away in his sleep."

_Passed away. . . ._ Those simple words pierced me like a bullet. I felt paralyzed and numb even as my mind grasped the gravity of the situation, as though half of me were convinced it had to be some kind of nightmare. Otherwise someone would have told me right away, instead of letting me sleep ignorantly on. Otherwise Saki's revelation would not have been so indifferent and matter-of-fact, so devoid of emotion. I could not speak. It had to be a lie, I told myself; I had just spoken with father the night before, and he had seemed perfectly well, lucid and eager to get out of bed.

When I said nothing, Saki let out a slight sigh. "Sakaki's called the doctor over, but it's not like he'll be able to do any good. It's just to pronounce his death."

"Death?" I found myself backing up a step. "Come on. . . . Saki, this isn't something to joke about—"

"Would I joke about that?" He shrugged. "You needn't act so surprised. It was only a matter of time, the way he was going."

Mother seemed to snap out of her own numbness when she heard him say this. Her mouth fell open in a silent gasp and she glared at Saki. Her knuckles went white as she squeezed the handkerchief tighter in one hand and approached us.

Saki lowered his voice as he said to me, "I'm sorry you had to find out this way, Kazutaka."

Mother slapped him hard across the face. Saki did not flinch—in fact, a small smile moved his lips for a brief moment—but the abruptness and the sheer malice in that small act of violence startled the rest of us. We were used to her biting words, but never had my mother raised a hand against me, let alone against Saki, who was some other woman's child, and furthermore whom she had always seemed afraid to touch, as though to do so would have the same effect as touching a corrosive acid.

She must have been a little stunned by her action herself, for it was a moment before she could recover herself. Her hand remained poised in the air like a videotape on pause.

When she did recover she grabbed Saki by the shirt and shook him, her clutching hands moving gradually up toward his throat as she yelled: "You _dare_ say you're _sorry?_ This is all your fault! You did this to him, you demon spawn! You devil! You murdered my husband! After all he did for you—"

I thought for sure she would try to throttle him. Apparently Sakaki did too. He rushed forward and grabbed mother by the arms, physically lifting her off of Saki. He wrapped his arms around her in an attempt to calm and restrain her as she screamed for someone to kill my half-brother. As our butler gently whispered in her ear, her strength eventually failed her and she collapsed in his arms, moaning for her God. The tears ran down her cheeks in rivers then, and as she sobbed she called out father's name over and over again, begging him not to leave her alone with Saki, as though by doing so she might actually call father's spirit back to his corpse. She was in such pain in her grief and her anger that it hurt me to watch, and startled the maids who still kept their distance. With this sudden, desperate swelling of devotion to my late father, I felt I hardly knew her.

I turned to Saki, who was watching her avidly, but without the hate I had expected to find. Like I had with the bird, I found myself asking him, "What did you do?"

He looked surprised as he turned to face me. "You don't believe what she says, do you, Kazutaka? Look at her." He nodded toward my mother, a disheveled and pitiable mess in our butler's arms. "She's obviously hysterical."

"Father's dead!" I reminded him. How was mother supposed to react?

He turned an accusing eye toward me. And you're a man, aren't you? his expression seemed to say.

"You haven't turned against me too, have you?"

"No." I lowered my gaze. "It's just . . . It's only natural she feels overwhelmed."

"She hasn't been taking her medication."

So he said as though that would explain everything. And for a brief moment, he sounded like our father. In other words, I was to believe, my mother's emotional wreckage was not due to grief but to her psychosis. It was because she was a nut job. A part of me resisted swallowing the logic of that simplistic argument, and yet I did swallow it, like a bitter pill. Mother was in hysterics, after all, and she had always hated Saki. She never had a problem before making sure everyone knew that. Why wouldn't she accuse him of such a thing, hoping to make sense of this senseless loss?

"In any case, there isn't anything anyone can do," Saki added not without some disdain. "She might as well just accept he's dead."

—

But mother would not accept it. In the days that followed, the responsibilities of running the household fell to us boys or Sakaki. Mother was too distraught to make even simple decisions, let alone plan a funeral. Compounding that, her distrust of everyone swelled into an all-out paranoia, which made all our lives more difficult. Father's sister came to stay with us for the funeral, and even her efforts at consolation were suspect in mother's eyes. She must have wanted something from father, mother said. Just like Saki, and the maids who seemed only good for standing around gawking these days. It was all a conspiracy against her. Everyone wanted something from father, and wanted her out of the way.

I could not bear to see mother like that. And yet I could not find it in me to feel sorry for her either. I could not force myself to believe, as I had pretended to as a child, that my mother really loved father so much, or that her show of grief was not actually the selfish fear of not knowing what the future would spell for her well-being. It led me to wonder how she would have reacted had I passed away. Surely if she grieved at all, if she did not replace me with some other object, it would be with the passing sense of loss one feels toward a broken toy.

That was why I could not stand the constant moaning coming from her room as I tried to get to sleep, or her amnesiac-like helplessness around the house during the daylight hours. She was a grown woman, not some infant to be coddled, I thought; but I never told this to Saki, though he would have agreed. It was not the right sort of thought for a grieving son to have.

Still, he must have noticed how impatient my attitude toward her had become. He seemed to take pleasure in the sight of mother's anguish, in some cruel, indifferent way, like a student marveling at a Dali and making light of the pain behind its creation. When she lost her appetite and sat at the dinner table just staring at the closed shutters, or when she bemoaned that no one was listening to her, even though she had all our attention, it seemed to take a conscious effort to keep the smile off of Saki's face.

Noticing my frustration one evening as I sat in front of the television, trying desperately to escape into its cacophony and my school work, he asked out of the blue if it was time for mother's tea. I was only too happy to acquiesce when he offered to take it to her himself, his voice small as he passed quickly through the room so that I hardly registered it.

A few minutes later, there rose a scream from the direction of her room. I rushed to see what was the matter, and found my mother holding a crystal vase in both hands like a baseball bat, its contents poured out on the floor. Apparently she meant to use it as a cudgel should Saki, who had merely set down the tray with its cup of tea, try anything against her. She explained this to me when I asked her what she planned on doing, and her words fell out like the rantings of a lunatic.

"He killed your father and now he wants to kill me, too!" she was shouting. By the look on her face, it was as though she were seeing something other than Saki before her—something far more sinister. "He'd kill us all if he had the chance! That monster would do away with us all!"

"I merely brought her her tea," said Saki, a bastion of calm by comparison. "I don't know what set her off."

"Mother, stop," I entreated her. "What makes you think Saki wants to kill you?"

"He said it himself! He wants to get rid of all of us!"

"Come, now. Why would he do that?"

"He hates us all, can't you see? He's not . . . not . . ." She shook, stuck on one word that terrified her to say and never came out. "He's trying to poison me with that tea, make it look like heart failure or a stroke. Just like he did to your father. I don't know how he did it—"

"How, then, mother? With black magic?"

She had not been able to believe the doctor when he said father's death might have been caused by a blood clot that stopped his heart. Might have been wasn't enough, she had said, and refused to believe Saki had not been the one responsible no matter what the evidence showed—or rather, what it did not.

"She's delusional," Saki said and shook his head. "You can't believe a word she says as long as she refuses to take her meds. Look," he said to her and drank down half the cup of tea he had brought himself. "Would I do that if it were poisoned?"

"I'll make you another pot myself," I offered to reassure her.

"I don't _want_ another pot!" she said. "I don't want any _tea!_ I want that bastard out of my house! I want him dead! Kill him before he can do any more damage, Kazutaka! _Now, while he's just standing there!_"

I sighed. I understood then that Saki had been right. The frustration that had been building up inside me over the last few days surfaced again, and resentment overcame the pity I had initially felt for my mother.

"Mother, have you been taking your medication?"

As soon as those words left my lips, I must have known somewhere deep in my heart that I had as good as betrayed her. Her eyes flew open. Gathering herself together in a defensive posture, she backed away from me, watching me warily the entire time. "No . . . no, not my Kazutaka. Not my Kazutaka, too," she muttered. "He got to you, too, didn't he? He turned you against me!"

"Don't be ridiculous, mother."

"Shall I call a doctor?" Saki offered.

"No!" Mother looked between us now, unsure which was the less trustworthy. "Can't you see, Kazutaka? He's trying to take you away from me with his lies!"

"What lies, mother? Answer me truthfully. Have you or have you not been taking your medication?"

"Yes, _mother_, tell him the truth," said Saki.

She stared at him wildly, her eyes wide like an animal caught in a trap when the hunter returns.

"I won't take those pills! You just want me drugged so you can murder me more easily!"

"Stop that nonsense. The medication is for your own good," I told her. "We can't reach you when you get like this. Why can't you understand that?"

I grabbed her around the middle abruptly, managing to wrench the vase from her grip before she could hurt one of us. She lashed out violently, instinctively, as though I were suffocating her. That was when my aunt stepped into the room, and, asking what was going on, went quickly to mother's side upon seeing her distress. Mother stopped her in her tracks with an abrupt, "Stay away from me, backstabbing whore!" and I saw my aunt's face pale and freeze in shock. In my own surprise that mother would say such a thing, I released my hold.

"Sakaki! Sakaki!" she cried again like a banshee. Tears streaked her cheeks.

I could have reached out to her again. Even if mother only shrugged me off, I could have at least made an effort to console her. However, with the memory of how she had touched me fondly in the past only to lay me aside at the next suitable moment rising to my consciousness . . . I found it impossible to sympathize with her.

When our butler failed to come to her rescue, mother fell to her knees, putting her hands over her ears and chanting over and over, "Go away, go away," as though the three of us were mere illusions caused by a trick of light at night to be wished away.

"Do as she says," I told the other two. "Leave her." If that's what she wants, to be left alone, I said to myself, then I would let her have her way.

I hardly glanced behind me as we stepped out of the room.

Saki said quietly in my ear as I was closing the door after us: "She's a mess. Now you see how much misery she's in."

I ignored the shadow of a smile that graced one corner of his lips. "I know."

"So?" he said. "What are you going to do about it, Kazutaka?"

What could I do? Was there even such a thing as a merciful solution? I went to bed that night with that question repeating in my head like a broken record. Sometime during the early hours of morning, I dreamed of mother rasping my name. The syllables were choked out as she pleaded and begged me to stop. Her breaths came like gasps from between her lips, from which the lipstick had been sloppily wiped, keeping a staccato rhythm that was sexual in its desperation. I did not know why she was acting that way; but there was something about it that thrilled and frightened me with a satisfaction that was completely new.

It was so vivid, I did not think I was dreaming. Until a woman screamed and I awoke.

It was my aunt. I found her in mother's room, kneeling beside her body and looking pale and sick to her stomach. She had opened the door to wake my mother, she managed to sob in explanation, but instead had found her collapsed on the floor still in her housecoat from the evening before, her skin white and cold to the touch, her limbs sprawled out and eyes wide open. Motionless, just like one of her dolls. She was dead.

Not that it had ever been a subject of contemplation, but I came to a realization then that I had expected mother's death—whenever it came—would be a frantic, violent one, just as she had lived her life, in that darkness that none of us could ever comprehend. There was something wrong about the reality of it. There was something about her position that morning and her behavior the night before that did not fit in my mind. But I could not say what it was.

There were no wounds on the body. The doctor could find no cause of death in a preliminary examination, and because it happened so soon after father's death there was never an autopsy. Perhaps she died of a broken heart, it was suggested. Either that, or she committed suicide on an overdose of anti-psychotics. She was under an extraordinary amount of stress, after all, and her mental state—the only significant problem with her health—could have compounded it, making her feel as though she were trapped with no other way out. Yes—my aunt agreed with the same strange eagerness as the father of that boy in the grove, some thirteen years later—mother had expressed just those sorts of feelings in her recent outbursts.

At the time, I was too numb from having lost both parents in such a short amount of time to question the sheer ludicrousness of this assumption. My mother would have sooner betrayed her husband than betray God by taking her own life. As for the anti-psychotics, she had not trusted them. But I was stunned by her loss, and in that state it was easier to simply believe what others told me.

Among them was Saki and his conviction it was out of pure selfishness that mother abandoned us to make our own way in the world following father's death. Somehow, I came to take stock in this belief as though it were my own, nourishing the familiar feeling of resentment that arose beside it, losing myself as it fed like a leach off my sadness, holding my head beneath the torrent.

—

I did not cry for my parents. I was too numb, my mind thickened by a fog through which I could understand the gravity of my situation but was prevented from acting accordingly. I felt horrible for it. For the first time in a long time I recognized the calling of the filial obligations I had, with Saki as co-conspirator, rejected, and yet I no longer knew how to answer it again. They were my parents, my conscience said, and they had given me life; but I could not help asking what had ever possessed them to do it when they handled me with such cold, scientific care. Did they really deserve this guilt, this remorse of mine, I wondered, my heart as stagnantly cold as the November air.

The funeral was a Buddhist one, despite mother's Christian aspirations. She would never have been allowed a Catholic burial anyway with what uncertainties surrounded the manner of her death. The black cars carrying their ashes crawled through the autumn haze and the streets that wound to the cemetery where the Muraki headstone stood. Behind them, distant relations, colleagues of father's, and anyone else who had come to pay respects walked with the proscribed solemnity like corpses themselves.

We went through the rituals, Saki and I, wordlessly. In our identical black school uniforms, white bands around our arms, we walked in the procession with our heads bowed, pacing ourselves to the chanting of a temple priest up ahead and the rhythmic clatter of metal rings hitting together at the top of a standard that bobbed like a buoy, its red banners fluttering occasionally in the breeze. Inhaling the incense smoke that drifted back through the crowds toward us. For all those who looked upon us with pitying eyes, our heads were bowed in sorrow, but I very much doubt that Saki felt the same hollowness inside that I did, and the immense weight of guilt that came with it. I would glance at him occasionally, waiting for him to speak to me, to say something vaguely reassuring as he had so often done in the past, but for once he was silent.

There were two women about my mother's age walking behind us. Thinking it improper to look back, I did not see their faces, nor did I recognize them by voice, so I could not know for whom or what reason they had joined the funeral procession. When they began to speak in low, hushed voices, I wished they would shut up—even the effort of listening felt like a cruel and unnecessary bother to my bereaved self. However, I could not help straining an ear once I gathered I was the subject of their conversation. It was in my own self-interest to do so.

"How sad. Can you even imagine? First the father, then the mother, so close together. . . ."

"I hear they don't even know the cause of death."

"It's downright eerie, isn't it?"

Hearing those words, I thought of the doctor's uneasy rationalizations for my parents' deaths, and of my relatives' only too eager acceptance of them. How quickly the fear of the unknown beings out the scientific in even the most religious of characters—and the superstition in the scientist.

I turned my gaze toward Saki as he walked beside me. I do not know what I was looking for in doing so, only what I found. He was smiling. It was the same nonchalant, slow-to-form smile he had displayed at my confusion over the injured bird, when I had faltered and shown him in brilliant clarity my own fatal weakness.

After all the chances I had already been given to identify it, I finally recognized the monster that stirred beneath his surface then—the monster that only my mother had seen, and which the rest of us had dismissed as another of her paranoid delusions. In that moment I finally understood that it had been I who was mistaken all along, and I who had been deluded. Bewitched by Saki's charm—by his aura of innocence that I knew at first glance could not be trusted, and yet had ended up convincing myself to trust nonetheless, even sinking so far as to be prepared and willing to deny my own family for his transient promises. How naive I was, what an utter fool, not to see them for the lies they were! The confession could not have been clearer on Saki's face, in that victorious smile.

That afternoon, after we had returned home and the guests had all gone, I confronted Saki with my suspicions. We were in the sitting room where father kept two old swords on display. Their presence there did not even cross my mind as we entered that room, our uniforms damp from the autumn cold. My thoughts were elsewhere. Outside, in the fading light, it began to drizzle.

"Why did you smile?" I asked him. Foolishly and impulsively, for I had planned out none of my confrontation, only let the outrage of being deceived for the past year and a half lead me where it may.

His response was suspiciously lacking in any consciousness of the gravity of that day, as though it had all been a piece of fiction, and we merely the actors whose time on the stage was now finished.

"What are you talking about, Kazutaka?"

"When those two women behind us were talking. You heard what they said, how it was strange how mother and father died so suddenly. I know you did. I saw you smile."

As though to say, Is this the smile you mean? it appeared on his lips again. "What about it?"

"Well, it just felt like there was something . . . _wrong_ about the whole thing. Something unnatural. Those women felt something was off about what happened to mother and father. I felt it. I thought maybe you, with that smile . . . It looked like you knew something I didn't."

Likewise, Saki seemed to know better than I where I was going as he watched me like a hawk.

"They were in good health, Saki—"

"Not from where I could see. One had a body that was breaking down before our eyes, the other a mental defect and suicidal tendencies—"

"Mother would never have taken her own life," I told him, and my hands shook so hard with my conviction I clenched them at my sides. "She was unstable, yes, but not like that. Not even off the meds. You were with her that night. . . . And what about father saying he was starting to feel better? _You_ were the last one to speak to him. . . ."

I stopped, unable to go on as the pieces fell into place.

Saki chuckled. "My, Kazutaka, you seem to have it all figured out. You really are your father's son, you know, a regular detective of the medical field. So, if the doctor had it all wrong . . ." He shrugged and looked up at me. "What's the answer?"

"The answer to what?"

"_What killed them_, Kazutaka, since you seem so sure? Or, perhaps I should be asking, _who_. . . ."

Without thinking of the consequences, without even knowing what I would do next, I grabbed one of the swords from its display rack and unsheathed it. The dull sound of the lacquer case hitting the floorboards seemed to echo in the room like a gunshot. I cannot say whether I wanted to kill Saki at that particular moment, as I aimed the point of the blade in his direction, though undoubtedly I felt the hunger pains for revenge growing inside of me the more certain I was of his guilt. I gripped the handle with both hands with a sudden and irrational sense of desperation, as though at any moment he might transform before my eyes into the monster mother had seen in him.

As was Saki's way, he appeared to be genuinely startled by my reaction.

"Kazutaka. What are you doing?" That knowing look of his wavered, clouded by disbelief.

I could not trust it for a moment.

"It was you, wasn't it?"

"Stop joking around. That's dangerous."

"Don't change the subject. You know what you did."

"What I did. . . ."

"You killed mother and father, didn't you? _Didn't you, Saki?_"

My words struck him dumb for all of a moment. In his silence, my hand shook and my jaw trembled, but I steadied both. Then the smile slowly crept back onto his lips, more wicked than I had seen it in many months. "Are you going to kill me, Kazutaka?" he said in a low voice. "You wouldn't kill your own brother."

"_Half_-brother," I corrected.

"It doesn't matter. You won't do it. You can't. You and I are the same, Kazutaka. You'd have to be willing to kill yourself first. And you don't have that in you, do you?"

Again his smooth logic invaded me: we were the same. The truth of that clicked something into place, some crucial connection my mind had been unwittingly trying to form for the last two years but had been unable to until now. I did not want to believe it. With all my soul I wanted what he said to be a lie. We were not the same. I did not have that same darkness within me. That was what I told myself. But that same feeling that had nagged at me since the day we first met returned: that feeling like I was looking in a mirror when I looked at Saki.

I could not stand it a moment longer.

I rushed at him. And as I did so, he grabbed for the other sword on the stand, bringing it between us still sheathed as I swung my blade to cut him down. I was foolish to attack him like that, acting purely on my visceral emotion, my instinctual abhorrence to all he was and all he said I was. He could have easily sliced me in two when he shoved me off and unsheathed his own sword—had he wanted to.

Instead he batted the sword from my hand. I was not used to the balance of a steel blade and it took little effort on his part. The ring it made as it clattered against the wooden floor pierced my eardrums like a premonition. The edge of his own blade grazed my left cheek, but the momentary sting of it aroused no survival instinct in me. I could focus on nothing else but Saki. Never had his efforts been so calculated in our practice bouts. Never had his gaze as it fixed on me then exhibited such a perversely callous pleasure—like the gaze of an errant angel about to deliver the final blow.

Realizing then what my rashness had cost me, I tripped as I backed away from him and lost my balance, landing hard on my backside. I hardly noticed the pain. As I gazed up at Saki, as he lowered his blade so that the tip of it hovered just inches before my face, I knew he would kill me. I only hoped he would make faster work of me than he did his classroom vivisections.

"It was you!" I shouted. "You killed them!"

He grinned.

"Why do you care about the particulars so much? I thought you'd be grateful, Kazutaka."

Grateful? I gaped. "What?"

"Don't delude yourself, Kazutaka. You know they didn't love you. That selfish bastard we had to call father in front of his sniveling colleagues. . . . That crazy bitch who treated you like some inanimate object. . . . None of them could love you half as much as I do."

I could only stare at him then, unable to comprehend what he was telling me. My hardwiring would not allow it. What a sin it was, that twisted love he spoke of, a sin of such perfect and natural symmetry. . . .

"Don't you understand?" he said. "If I did kill them, it would only have been because I love you. It would only be to set you free from this prison you call a home."

"Saki . . ."

"I thought you'd be pleased, Kazutaka. To be free of them at last . . . no attachments in this world to cause us pain, just the two of us. . . ."

He forced a breathy laugh, but his mood had darkened. His fingers tightened on the grip of the sword, the motion making my heart flutter even as I defiantly met his stare.

"Guess I misjudged you, huh? What a waste. . . . Why couldn't you have just accepted it?"

A shot rang out through the hall with a deafening crack. For a moment, it was as though there was a delay between that sound and Saki's reaction. His body jerked slightly and his eyes flew wide open in surprise.

Then he pitched forward and collapsed on top of me. His body was heavy, forcing the air from my lungs. The grip of the sword fell out of his hand as the point of the blade hit the floor. Instinct would have been to put my arms around him, to catch his fall, but I could not move for shock. Nor would it have done any good. Saki was dead. I did not have to see the bloody holes in his back left by the buckshot, or check for a pulse at his throat to confirm it. I knew it within me, like a wire stretched taut between us had been severed, and my end had whipped back to sting me with a snap. In the instant that he touched me, he was gone.

Over his body I saw our butler aiming father's hunting rifle at the space where Saki had been only a moment ago. His figure, dressed in a black suit, was lit brilliantly by the last of the sun's light breaking through the window, but his face was in shadow so that for a moment I mistook him for my grandfather. The telltale trail of smoke floated up from the end of the muzzle. The rifle did not shake in his hands one bit as he said to me in a voice filled at once with relief and concern, "Young master. . . ."

These details remain sharp in my memory. It is the sharpness that comes when one's life flashes before his eyes, and the brain increases its functioning to stay alive if even a moment more. I remember the feel of the hardwood beneath me, and of Saki's dead weight on top. The thick, rough weave of the black school uniform jackets we both wore, and the scent that lingered about him like lilacs out of season, mingling with the acridity of gunsmoke and the mustiness of the autumn rain. I remember gazing stunned at Sakaki and silently imploring him, needing a reason, an explanation where I could find none. Saki was my Nero, and I could not believe that he could have caused such destruction all by himself, and then so suddenly ceased to be.

When I rolled him over, his face was locked in a peaceful expression, his eyes closed and lips slightly parted, as though—aside from the trickle of blood that ran from a corner of his mouth—he were only sleeping.

Once again, the incongruity, the conundrum of his person seized me and would not let go. For a moment, when he had been prepared to run me through, there had truly been something of a devil behind Saki's muddy blue eyes. Now all I could see was the face of a seventeen-year-old boy who had been my half-brother, no more than a day older than I.

My deepest regret was that I had not been the one to kill him. For what he did to me, he should have suffered.

—


	4. Muraki File, Part B

That night Sakaki and I disposed of the body in a marshy grove in a corner of the local park where people rarely bothered to go, least of all at that time of year. In the dark of that late-autumn night, no one noticed the black sedan that might otherwise have been conspicuous by day. There was as much ceremony to our hasty burial as a cat covering its droppings: both of us were eager to be rid of the body and the malevolent aura that had hung over the household while Saki was alive. I could not say that a certain amount of superstition did not motivate us as well—a vague sense of unease that even dead we would not be completely rid of Saki.

By the time we had finished with our business, the fine black clothes and shoes we had worn to the funeral earlier that day were covered in dirt and mud; and as the fog began to gather, Sakaki leaned against the car and smoked openly—a habit he had always hidden from my parents. I remember his fingers shaking as he brought the cigarette to his mouth, the tightness in his lips when he exhaled. He had crossed himself when we put Saki in the ground; and if I had shared any of my mother's faith at that time, I might have done the same, so thick were the airs of misfortune that seemed to surround us that day. Sitting on the car's hood, staring at my knees, my feet propped on the bumper—trying to forget the weight of my brother's body in my hands as we half dragged it across the ground, and the feel of the wet dirt that still clung to my fingernails as evidence—I began to think of that man beside me as my family. The only family I had left.

We did not talk about Saki. We made no mention of him after that, either: his very name was a taboo. Still his memory became a kind of glue cementing us together as we never would have been before, to the point I looked to Sakaki as more than my material savior: he was my mentor in the trials of emotional and financial survival that were to follow.

As for Saki—to the rest of the world, it was as though he had never existed. Neither the authorities nor relatives ever asked, Hadn't the doctor another son that was living with him when he died? No good would come from correcting that discrepancy, so we let the matter lie.

Only the butler and I were left to maintain that house that was too large for its day and age. Although the short days of winter that followed were bright and crisp, the empty rooms and hallways seemed perpetually dark. The music I played freely now to lessen their weight was only a thin veneer covering the vacuum of silence that clung like dust to the walls: it could not penetrate them. Yet even this silence was different only in its degree from the state of the household when it was full—when the various players who inhabited it would pass by one another like ships in the night.

As much as I wished it to be false, I could not deny it was Saki who had changed that. Even in the hours I avoided him like the plague and wished he had never come to our home, I could not but grudgingly admit he had eased my loneliness, even to the point I craved it back again.

But no longer. If I were truly the abomination Saki claimed, then there was some small amount of comfort to be found in being the only one, responsible for only myself. I went about my days clinging to the sanctity of routine: rising in the morning to the same breakfast, the same school uniform, walking the same path to class without ever veering. It was the return in the afternoon I dreaded, for it meant a return to the memories that haunted my every wakeful moment in that house. I would have welcomed a fire burning it down in the middle of the night, and taking me and all its possessions with it.

Not least among which mother's dolls, which sat as they always had in their orderly rows on the shelves in her room, gathering dust with no one to come and worship at their false altar. They seemed more out of place then than ever. Servants of the dead when mother was alive, which could not follow her to the grave. Only stay and accuse me of crimes I knew I could not have committed. Only my guilt for her memory kept me from touching them, either in malice or fondness, until the day I packed them away and moved out of that house.

In the meantime, I was about to enter my senior year of high school. I was rarely wanting of an excuse to keep me away from the house then.

—

Mibu Oriya had been a classmate of mine starting in our first year of high school, but we never considered ourselves more than that until the year my parents died. Perhaps we were too alike to actively seek out one another's company, both the soft-spoken sons of old families, his even more ancient and mist-shrouded than mine. There was too much baggage on both our sides as individuals. However, he happened to get on the good side of Ukyo, who was a year our junior and a childhood playmate of mine whom I understood from early on my parents expected me one day to take as my wife. Through her, it seemed, we were invariably drawn together; and he developed a fondness for me, using Ukyo's familiar terms with me to cultivate a friendship.

As he ended up becoming Ukyo's study partner, he figured I could not refuse his offer to accompany the two of them at the local cafe they frequented for tea and dessert after class. It began after Saki moved into my home, and as tensions between he and I continued to build, I looked forward to those outings as a much-needed diversion, even if I dreaded the return home afterwards even more. Sometimes the three of us would see him passing by the window, talking to upperclassmen and the kind of students we avoided. At those times, merely the reminder of Saki's existence made me feel the odd man out—undeserving of friends such as those two, who were so sincere and generous in comparison, even though they knew so little about me. Selfishly, I dreaded losing the sense of security that their companionship provided.

After a while, however, Ukyo stopped going as often, to the point it was a special occasion when she did join us. I did not question either of their motives, but I knew her absences and my discomfort sprang from the same source.

That changed after my parents' deaths. She accompanied us almost constantly out of what appeared to be a sense of obligation to me. But again, only for a time. When that eventually waned, it was final. She stopped coming altogether. Of this Oriya said nothing, and I did not press him for an explanation.

Needless to say, when this routine first started I thought he had developed a crush on Ukyo, and that inviting me out with them was a chance to watch me for signs of my disapproval or lack thereof. In truth, I did not mind his cozying up to her—if only in the platonic manner of schoolmates he wished to portray it as.

After a while, however, I began to wonder if in fact he had a bit of a crush on me. That is not to say a crush like a boy of our age would have on a girl, with the goal in mind of winning something from her. Oriya's crush, if I may call it that, was intellectual in nature. It was a combination of curiosity and, at this point, pity, melding over the years into a mutual trust the depth of which both of us were too self-conscious to acknowledge aloud. It must have been that which led his family to take me into their care, as father had taken Saki into our home. Our fathers, while both of excellent social and financial standing, hardly knew one another. However, my manner must have appealed to the Mibus' old-fashioned values, for my regular presence during that crucial final year of high school was welcomed in their Tokyo household with the utmost generosity.

Despite their initial hospitality and Oriya's insistence I make myself at home, I was never able to forget my place as a guest in that house. The others must have recognized my discomfort, for an impersonal coldness would seep into their voices or their eyes when they addressed me—not out of regret for inviting me in, but out of an uncertainty as to how to handle me. It was a manner I would grow used to so well I do believe I cultivated it like a pearl within me. I could not help accepting it as natural to distance others from myself. It certainly was easier to pass through others' lives like a ghost, leaving no traces of my passing, no obligations.

Thus the months passed fleeting as a summer dream. The not quite two years I spent with Saki had at one time seemed to stretch back far into my memory, feeling like they would last forever, as though to make up for his absence earlier my brain had been rewired to think he had been with me all along. With Oriya, somehow knowing our senior year was only a temporary respite from the real world led me to feel its transience with my whole person, as though each day I spent in his company were the first and last.

Then graduation and college entrance exams were upon us. For all our worrying, our prophecies of failure turned out to be empty, merely hollow platitudes we said in order to push ourselves harder at what already came naturally to us. Oriya for his part spent much more time studying than I, to whom the memorization of facts came with little effort; but I put on a show of solemn concentration for him anyway. And he, as though to one-up me, hid it from me when he struggled.

No matter the methods, however, the outcome was the same: that spring we found ourselves entering the same university, for less than which we vowed neither of us would settle. We had separate apartments and attended separate classes, and in a year's time were moving within different circles; but at the end of the day it was the other's company we inevitably craved.

I entered the medical program, he the liberal arts. He began to grow his hair out and abandoned his shyness with women; I started to find my eyesight worsening and was prescribed glasses for studying, while I threw myself whole-heartedly into the field to which I had once sworn abstinence. My father's house was gone, sold to the highest bidder; and, with its most valuable objects safely stored away, I was eager to put that chapter of my life far behind me. That place had become no more than an empty shell I could not crawl back into, even the garden and veranda that had been unwitting co-conspirators in my daydreams tainted by Saki's memory. For a short time we were happy, Oriya and I. We embraced our independence and looked to a future of endless opportunity with heads held high, unaware that in our handful of years at university, we would change so radically we would have been almost unrecognizable to our former selves.

Oriya, however, in his small act of rebellion, still naively clung to his conviction he would never take over the family business: his father was a young man of forty-two with decades of fire left within him. I smiled when he said things like this, and wondered how long it would be before the novelty of the life he'd chosen for himself wore off and he became as disillusioned and practical as I, and discovered what he was made to do. And he, for his part, feared that I was an old man already and would waste the precious youth and freedom that was granted to me for only this short time. Like Saki with his contagious sarcasm, he was bound and determined not to allow that to happen.

—

During this time I was encouraged by Oriya, who was concerned I was spending too much time on my studies and an insufficient amount on what he termed my bodily needs, to experiment with women, both on a social and sexual level. I was too old to be a virgin, he said; and he, who fancied himself something of an expert on the ways of the fairer sex, was determined to cure me of this deficiency.

This despite my promise to Ukyo. Though our tenuous engagement had been arranged by our parents, and it had been some months since I had had any contact with her in person, I could not deny that as the source of some reluctance on my part. Now, with my parents gone, I was torn between breaking the arrangement and keeping it out of filial obligation to them; so I set the issue of Ukyo aside completely without making a decision.

He never said so explicitly, but I knew Oriya had his motives as well. His plan to familiarize me with the female was all a carefully orchestrated plot to distract me from Ukyo and put off our marriage as long as possible (I don't mind saying that so far he has been successful) under the guise of looking out for my social and physical well-being. He would put his own needs last if need be to help me in this area, he said. How self-sacrificing of him.

It was not as though I had to expend much effort. The bane of my childhood relationship with my mother had grown into a full-blown curse in my late adolescence and twenties. Passing women in the halls I could feel their eyes on me, coveting me. It would make any young man burst with confidence, but I took a certain joy from it as well to know that I could torture them in this very same way, by making what they wanted inaccessible, and dangling what they could not have in front of them. It drove them wild. Even the way I spoke, the careful language I used to keep them at a distance, only succeeded in drawing them nearer. I took a sadistic joy from this, and not simply because of the reversal of roles: the intellectual interest they held for me in this manner was more arousing than the biological.

Still, I did not reject women completely. I had dates on a regular basis. Going through the motions, manipulating the rules of the game, the artificiality of the whole affair confirmed the suspicion I had had in my childhood that I was an aberration. Normal was as clear as a black line on a chart, and I like a fish out of water for the first time came face-to-face with the evidence of the abnormality of my feelings. Dating women was the expected behavior. I complied. I even enjoyed it, in my own ways. But in my heart I knew I was only an actor donning a mask.

The problem was not attraction. Despite what I have said of my adolescence, I am attracted to women. I had intercourse with several when I was not studying, sometimes when I was. No, the problem is _how_ I am attracted.

The hidden promiscuity of women both amuses and disgusts me. Almost without exception, the coquettishness they display is merely a thin veneer. Scratch it and you reveal the natural whore underneath. By natural I refer to the reproductive instinct, so ingrained in one's hormonal response and separate from higher, mental processes as to keep the individual receptive to sexual contact even into the latter term of pregnancy. By this very nature, the profanity of the aroused female body is something to fill men with a healthy suspicion. The clammy, swollen flesh of the thighs and breasts, the mouth gaping with each moan like a fish's, genitalia that suck and salivate like an independent creature. . . . Even now the physiology of the female orgasm possesses a mystery that cannot be quantified, that the male simply does not. With such vulgarity and inherent irrationality, it is no wonder that in almost every culture female sexuality frightens men.

If I were unnerved, however, it was not because of the women I slept with but what I wanted to do to them. Violent images entered my mind when I was with them. The woman underneath me, a thirty-something teaching assistant a year away from a medical degree, even she was reduced to a mindless sexual creature with the right stimuli. After all she had worked for, all the years of currying respect in academia, how quick she was to debase herself for a beautiful face, sweating and bucking and crying out like an animal.

And for what? A few minutes of carnal pleasure? I could find no sympathy for such a creature; and I began to imagine what would happen if I were to hurt these women. If I were to stab them—just there beneath the breast—as they reached orgasm, slit their throats . . . would they even notice? Would their cries of pain sound any different from those of pleasure? Or perhaps they would merely stare with eyes bulging in disbelief before death came for them, like any other animal. I became so consumed by these thoughts—these fantasies, in fact—that after the initial disgust and shame wore off I found myself turning to them more and more during intercourse for inspiration. What sheer exhilaration to know that I had the means by which to end those women's lives there on the spot if I so chose—to feel their life leave them in the blood rushing hot and thick through my fingers. And to know that they would trust me until the very end. It was that which made sex satisfying.

I nearly strangled a woman to death on one of these occasions. She was a classmate with a condescending smile and a curiosity about erotic asphyxiation. When I confessed I could help her explore that curiosity, we both agreed to take a scientific approach to our love-making. Sometime during the act, though, I lost control of that rational part of me. I did not realize at the time, except on a subconscious level, her resemblance to my mother.

"To think I trusted you," she sobbed as she hastily re-dressed. The welt forming across her windpipe assuaged my anger and disappointment as well as it appeared to fuel hers. But she did not press charges. She simply dropped out of class the next day. I had been ready to admire her for her lovely emotional collapse, but to take her personal trauma out on her professional life. . . . I lost my respect.

Some of the dates with whom Oriya set me up, I later learned, complained to him of me. They said I was either too overbearing and frightened them or else I was too polite and wound up offending them. The one thing they all shared was their disillusionment, as it seemed reality did not live up to their expectations, which were based on superficialities, and for this they blamed me. Nothing is ever good enough for women, I told him in my own defense. Not that I needed to. He always took my word over theirs. To a fault at times.

I had always viewed my attraction to women as a base one—something hardwired into my physiology for one purpose and one purpose only: reproduction. Ever since discovering that mystery patient's file in grandfather's archives, however, I recognized that sexual pleasure could be found with another man. Or, at very least, with the image of another man. Due to my experience with Saki, I was reluctant on a mental level to seek it out. On a physical level . . .

It was my body's addiction: at the same time providing a much needed high and dashing my hopes when that high wore off, forcing me to see how far I truly was from contentment.

I was twenty when I decided to give sex with men another try. My studies, my determination to make something of myself in the medical field and distinguish myself from my father, and my research into grandfather's patient that turned up more dead-end questions than answers left me with an extreme sense of loneliness despite Oriya's unswaying companionship. What was missing from my life was a certain intimacy that could not be filled by any woman, let alone any normal human being, my criteria for doing so were already so high. But that did not stop me from trying. Men, women, cigarettes, booze, luxury and expense. Death. But that was to come later.

I was engaged in a research project with one of my professors on the condition of neural receptors after supposed cell death. He knew my parents, if only professionally—I myself had met him at home at a dinner hosted by my father, though I did not remember—and for that we gravitated toward one another, out of a sense of familiarity among other things. Our research was finished ahead of schedule; but at dinner one evening a week before our presentation was scheduled, when one of his colleagues asked after our progress, my professor told him, "Muraki and I still have some sample analysis to finish up tonight."

This was a complete fabrication. I understood his meaning immediately and did not contradict him, even as the others applauded us for working so diligently. I merely smiled and nodded. Inside I wondered how far I would allow myself to go. I was not daunted by thoughts of how it might change the context of our relationship. If anything, I took a perverse pleasure in them. My professor had made his desires clear before with long looks and restrained breathing whenever he stood close to me to study my results. It is even easier to recognize the signs of arousal in a man than in a woman. I was aware of my appearance and its effect on people, proud in fact, and I was elated that it gave me control of a higher, more inescapable nature than any he might have had over me.

Still, I did not mind gratifying this small desire. I rationalized the prospect of having intercourse with him to the point I believed it would even be good for me. On another level, there was something thrilling about the unethicalness of it that made me recall those days of my youth when I was alone with my illicit thoughts, when the pressure to keep them hidden made my pulse race.

We did not bother turning on the lights in the lab. As soon as the door was closed behind us his mouth was on me. His breath tasted like cabbage and too much ginger, and was all I could hear as he pawed me and guided me toward one of the worktables. He had something of a stoop to his shoulders and circles always under his eyes, but in the dark I could ignore what I wanted to ignore. His face felt long and loose and lightly stubbled. His kisses were clumsy and extraordinarily dry. He had feminine hands used to delicate lab work, and they remained uncomfortably cold and clinical the entire time. At that point none of it mattered: the feelings that had been pent up inside me for almost a decade were aching to be released, one way or another.

He pressed me against the edge of the table and helped me up onto it, working his hips between my legs as he did so, making me aware of his erection in case I still had doubts about the purpose of this encounter. He was fogging up my glasses so he pulled them off, and undressed me only as was sufficient. His breathing became more erratic as he unzipped his pants (he kept his lab coat buttoned so as not to ruin his shirt), studying me in the dark like one of his specimens in the process. I leaned back on my hands when he lifted my leg and slowly pushed into me. Until then, I had only experimented by myself in my teenage years, reading about homosexual deviance and daring no more than a finger at a time. This hurt many times worse, and I bled afterwards, but for the time being I was too involved to care. Just like the dreams I had had of Saki doing the same, the pain and the alien sensation of him inside my body quickly turned to almost unbearable, raw pleasure deep down. Saki had been the first and last man to touch me until then. Now I had the proof that my desires were not limited to him and his influence after all.

The professor leaned into me as he fucked me. His slicked hair tickled my neck and I stared unfocused at his white lab coat moving with each thrust in front of my face. The disinfected smell of it and the translucent weave triggered a memory of grandfather's patient—that perfect, tortured face I had fallen in love with years ago—and I remember wondering for a few magnificent seconds what it would feel like if _he_ were in my place, with myself deep inside _him_, before I succumbed to my orgasm.

Yet when we left the lab, bitter disappointment crept into me. That patient was just an illusion. My professor could not understand why I denied him the post-coital affection he thought he deserved. Looking at him again under the fluorescent lights, I almost wanted to vomit. What had happened between us meant nothing, resulted in absolutely nothing. It was merely the base friction of members, no different from animalistic heterosexual acts. He was a clumsy lover—the term lover, it should be noted, is applied loosely here—and not even taken seriously by his colleagues besides. What made him think I, who could have anyone I chose with my looks and my position, who could legally take credit for ninety percent of our joint project—what made him think I owed him anything?

I felt a queer kinship with the noisy vacuum being pushed down the deserted hall when we left. Whatever I did to fill it, whether it was letting myself be used by my professor, or fucking the women Oriya introduced me to or other young men I kept hidden from him, the emptiness was always there inside me, growing like a tumor.

That was the brutal irony. That for all I received I was left wanting, and hungrier than before. I could not be contented. I began to think nothing would ever be enough to satisfy the particular desires constantly nagging me like a chronic ache. Nothing could fulfill my expectations and match the image of perfection I held within my heart. With a certain degree of masochistic pleasure, I understood at least on this one level how the women with whom I had slept felt.

I began to contemplate death.

—

I was lost. While my budding career in medical science seemed to have a bright future ahead of it, thereby guaranteeing me a life of financial and social comfort, in my soul I was lost and alone.

When I gave up trying to fill the void with expensive food and experiences and beautiful faces, I took up smoking, and found myself drunk many of the nights I spent alone over my studies. If my grades had dropped as a result, at least then I would have been able to call my behavior a cry for help; but that was not my nature, and they did not, and I was called a genius. Practicing martial arts with Oriya usually succeeded in clearing my mind and my body of dark humors; but when the depression returned, it returned completely, and there was no remedy.

I should have died years before.

That thought, which I once believed gone forever from my life, plagued me once more. I should have died with my parents, and at Saki's hand. I should have met my end in a swift and honorable way, and I should have met it bravely. Instead, I was a coward, deprived of that release from the pain of existence by a butler I loved too much to fault for it, and whiling away the life at which I had been given a second chance in discontent.

My ennui and restlessness were proof of that—proof that something of that painful time remained with me even into my adulthood. Some trace of Saki still echoed in my mind when I allowed it to fall silent of scientific thought. Some whisper from the past telling me we two were alone in this world, different, aberrant from everything else—that only we in our mutual affliction could understand one another. That we had to stick together. That we had no other choice.

But, of course, there is always a choice. My other option was to join him in death, and confound whatever wicked plan the Devil had made for us.

So I began to contemplate suicide.

With my access to drugs, I could have ended my life painlessly, or torn open my arteries as grandfather's patient had done over and over in his desperation. Such a rebellious end appealed to my sense of aesthetics. However, no matter how detailed the plan in my mind, I could never bring myself to do anything. I could not so much as make a mark, or fix a lethal dosage at which to simply look and wish. At this point, I had already been administering myself non-lethal amounts of certain poisons in an effort to see if I could build an immunity to them; yet I knew my boundaries well, and remained terrified of stepping over them, into territory from which there would be no return. Even when I could sense death not far away—when it could be felt like a deep cold on the other side of a glass, merely waiting for me to invite it in—my body acted of its own survival instinct, disobeying the mind's will to let the blood flow.

Perhaps it was Oriya's love that stayed me from doing myself harm. He must have seen my pain and known not what to do about it; yet simply his concern and his pity were enough to make me regret even thinking of my life so capriciously.

He had been cold for a time—unsure of how to act around me, not knowing the best way to reach me in my fog. I, of course, felt his frigidity and wished I could resent it, that I could take it as further justification for my suicidal thoughts. Yes, I knew I was being selfish. An inexplicable sadness rose from within me merely at the thought of what my death might do to him, and I clung to that feeling as my lifeline.

It had once prompted me, leaving our high school for the final time under the blooming cherries, to wonder out of the blue, and interject headlong into our conversation—shattering our semblance of ignorant normalcy, and reforming our friendship forever from the broken pieces I had made—

It prompted me to ask him, if I should die before he did, would he—and it was all right if he lied—would he shed even a single tear for me?

He did not lie, nor did he tell the truth. He did not answer my question.

"Why would you say such a thing?" he asked instead. Did I plan on dying? Was I accusing him of not caring? What had he ever done to make me doubt his sincerity? So desperate was the sound of his voice, and the look in his eyes, that I could not tell him the true reason behind my question. I could not intentionally drag him into that hell where I resided with the memory of Saki, especially then, in light of our successful entry into university.

I understood even before that afternoon that he would never willingly allow me to be an island unto myself, and vicariously would not allow me to harm myself. I could have appreciated that; I should have been contented by it. And in part I was. I did not really want to die. But I resented it as well. Against every rational fiber of my being, I wanted to blame him for that; I wanted him to pay for my life, and take the responsibility for saving it that he would not.

I never meant to hurt him like I did.

He introduced me to a woman who had a good seven or so years on me, someone in his department whom he thought I might like. He could not have known how she reminded me of mother. Her long permed hair hung heavy and lapped against her shoulder blades and the tops of her generous breasts when she walked like black waves. Her lips were painted dark, contrasting severely with her pale skin and complimenting bedroom eyes. Oriya assured me I would like her; but throughout dinner with the two of them—a cruel farce of our adolescent outings with Ukyo—though my words somehow managed to come out impeccably, I could not stop thinking of how much she and my mother looked alike, and wondering, paranoid, if I were truly imagining things when I heard the voice of my mother in something she had just said.

It was early spring. The air was cold, the cherry trees in bloom, and the three of us thought of returning to Oriya's apartment to grab some drinks for a late night _hana-mi_. While he was inside, having left us out on the landing, my date complained to me of staying there. She would rather go to my place where we could be alone. Oriya would understand if we ditched him, she murmured huskily, leaning close; after all, I was his best friend.

As if it were not apparent by her words what she wanted of me, she gently brushed back my hair and kissed my face, and her breasts pressed against my arm and the side of my chest, warm and alive with her heavy breathing. I did not touch her in return. I closed my eyes as her lips grazed my ear and breathed in the cloying scent of her perfume, the alcohol on her breath. It was not exactly the same, but there was enough in her scent that reminded me of mother's perfume to make my memories deceive me. The combination of that smell and her forwardness waged war on my confused senses, arousing me and repulsing me simultaneously. I wanted her for base and incestuous reasons, and for the same reasons wanted to rid myself of her completely. To eliminate her.

I tried to push her away. At the same time I could feel myself gripping her arms tightly in my gloved hands, my body as reluctant to part from hers as she was from me—just as I had once craved mother's affection desperately, yet could not stand for her to touch me. There was an evil in her intentions, and in how good her caress made me feel. My hand went to her throat. With my thumb I pressed hard on her larynx, fearing above all that someone might catch us in our shameful play of intimacy. She could not scream nor speak, only choke out my name and beg me to stop as she struggled to remove my hand which was gripping her with a strength and determination I had not known was within me. Her face, her wild eyes became mother's in my mind—mother who lay dying while I dreamed of throttling her in my sleep. I smiled apologetically, even as I strangled her, and the combination of her terrified heartbeat, beating against my thumb, and her lustiness of before made my gorge rise. She pushed away from me just a little too hard.

Her foot slipped off the landing, and in her high heels she could not find footing on the stair. She was already started in motion. Without the time or frame of mind to grab hold of the railing, gravity carried her down, tumbling backwards over the stairs. The first impact of her back forced the air from her lungs and rendered her unable to scream. The second blow, this time to the back of the head, knocked her unconscious with a sickening crack. By the time she slid to the pavement below, motionless, she was dead of a broken neck if nothing else.

It had all happened in a matter of seconds. Stunned, I remained at the top of the staircase staring in disbelief. The gravity of my situation had yet to sink in. In the meantime, I watched with disconnected fascination as blood began to pool around her head in a dark halo. There she lay, a broken doll, a bird fallen from her nest. I felt strangely calm; and I could not deny that the rush of adrenaline suddenly surging through my veins exhilarated me.

Oriya emerged from his apartment moments later. When he saw me alone and my date sprawled at the foot of the stairs, he dropped the bottle of wine and the glasses he was holding, and raced down the steps two at a time to her side, swearing under his breath. I remember feeling a twinge of anger seeing him so concerned over the woman who could not be saved, rather than over me who was in turmoil inside.

He straightened from where he had crouched to take her pulse, a frightened look on his face. "What did you do?" he said.

Just as I had said to Saki years ago in the schoolyard.

"It was an accident," I told him, and felt like a liar even though I told myself it was the truth. I would have killed her either way. "She lost her footing and . . ." The rest was obvious.

He turned his eyes back to the woman. There was nothing left to do, so I knew he was doing it to avoiding looking at me.

Two of the glasses he had dropped were shattered but one remained whole. I picked it and the bottle up and brought them with me as I made my way down the stairs to where he was. My knees shook with each step, making me feel incongruously giddy.

"How could this happen? I was only inside for a few minutes," he said to no one in particular as I sat down beside him. He saw me begin to open the wine out of the corner of his eye and turned on me. "What are you doing?"

"I need a drink."

"Are you insane?" He pulled the bottle away from me and lowered his voice lest we wake his neighbors. "You can't drink while she's . . . she's . . ."

"She's dead, Oriya. What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to call the police!"

I wanted to hit him, but to me then calling the authorities felt like the craziest thing anyone could have suggested. I had buried Saki under cover of night and no one was the wiser. My priorities were all shuffled up, and I could not understand why we could not dispose of this woman's body the same way. This woman at whom I could not even look without recalling my mother. I think I must have said so out loud, because Oriya swore and said my name in such a disappointed tone of voice I felt ashamed to hear it.

"I can't call," I told him. "I can't." My survival instinct would not allow it.

So he did it for me.

"They won't arrest you. They must see this sort of thing all the time. It was an accident, like you said," he said to reassure me as we waited for the authorities to arrive.

Or perhaps it was to reassure himself. It could not have been easy lying to the officers who took our statements. No, he had not seen it happen, and he could corroborate that my date had been drinking before her fall. But he knew. He knew I was directly responsible for her death. He even knew why I did it. I did not need to tell him.

And yet he saw that I got away with her murder.

From the beginning of our relationship, Oriya made an effort not to get involved in my affairs. Saki was my problem alone. The women he introduced me to were none of his concern from that point on; he took no responsibility for what happened between us. When he found out I was sleeping with men, he was not surprised. He gave me the generic "I don't care what you do in private, but don't bring them by to see me" response. He even managed to sound both disgusted and jealous at the same time.

Now he could avoid it no longer. I had involved him, implicated him in my own affairs, in my own sins. He was privy to the death of that woman who looked like my mother. He saw her corpse with his own eyes, lying at the bottom of the stairs leading to his own apartment. And despite his love for me, he could not have been so blind: he must have known the potential for violence was in me long ago. Surely he was not as guilty as I, but he was, as the saying goes, in the same boat.

He blamed me for dragging his soul down with mine, and rightly so; but he still made the decision. That night, he chose to do nothing. He knew what I was, he knew the monster lurking inside me, and he did nothing to stop it.

I have no doubt that is why he was so eager to drop out his senior year—that when, some months later, word came his father had fallen ill and Oriya realized the transient nature of life twice in such a short time, he jumped at the opportunity to get as far away from me as he could bring himself to get.

—

I cannot say that my reluctance to inform the authorities was completely due to a fear of prosecution. In fact, as years went by I began to feel invincible to the law; fortune or circumstance had been on my side for so long I honestly believed I was above prosecution. No, say what I like about law and morality, killing that woman did not feel wrong. It did not feel right, either, but it was definitely not wrong.

Women hold a duality for me not unlike the duality ascribed them by the Catholic Church, or by the various pagan and esoteric Judaic traditions upon which it was built, or even the religious foundations of my own country. The feminine incarnation of wisdom of the Kabbalah, Sophia, is herself described as the saint and the prostitute. I have described that latter side of that dualistic female nature already, the side that repulsed and aroused me in college, the side that is base and sexual and creative.

The side that I could not help but associate with my mother, Christian though she herself professed to be, for her incestuous manner toward me, and her madness—which I could never begin to comprehend until she was gone and the seed of it within myself came out of gestation. To me she represented those things of the west that proved awkward to me, though I grew up familiar with them: Christianity, the western aesthetic, and Victorian dolls.

It was after I killed that woman who resembled my mother that I dared to bring her dolls into the light once again. From their brown cardboard boxes I took each individual one, freeing it from its cloth wrapping, straightening its dress and soft, artificial hair, and studying it as imagine my mother must have. It was a way of attempting to make peace with her spirit. After killing that woman, I became desperate to cure whatever disease would drive me to such violence, and I was convinced—as I still am—that the foundation of it was laid in my relationship with my mother.

The Veronica I loved as a child was gone, but I learned to appreciate each of the others on its own merit. Their vestments were all unique, the color of their curls never the same as the next, the wear on some materials greater than others, but they may as well have all had the same face. The same mournful expression showed in each porcelain countenance, in every tiny pair of delicately painted lips. Whether oriental or occidental in origin. Once again I felt they knew what was in my soul, but this time we met not as competitors, but as heir and inheritance. Silently they spoke to me not with malice but with the need of a child to be acknowledged by its parent. With their glassy eyes fixed on me as they sat laid out on the table, I understood how easy it would be to go mad under their gaze, and it frightened me.

I took a boxful to a local shop that catered to doll collectors and asked the woman behind the counter to name her price. I was surprised when she rounded off a high figure, and even more that she seemed to be holding something back. She asked how I had acquired them, and expressed sympathy for my loss, though her manner was far from genuine. Rather, the yen signs flashed in her eyes with the silent appraisal of each specimen. Beginning to doubt my visit, I told her I would consider the offer, that I was not yet ready to part with the memories the dolls still held for me.

I was not aware until some time later how close that excuse was to the truth. Though I had told myself getting rid of the dolls would free me from my past, I became less and less convinced as days wore on. I truly was reluctant to part with them, now that they were finally mine alone.

Appropriately, it was not the dolls that saved me from my depression but mother's religion, the Catholic faith. I was no Christian myself, nor a Buddhist, was not even sure if I believed in God, and the closest I ever came to a religion was my love of natural science and medicine. I believed the miracles were to be found there, not in hazy foreign mythologies; until, like many who came before me, I realized the attraction of faith is not in the miracles themselves. They are merely icing on the cake, for those who crave something pretty they can touch and taste to convince them.

The church itself is a foreboding place, the cold and open space a microscope under which one's sins are obvious and examined; but in the alcove is shelter beneath the sad smile of the statue of the Virgin Mary. Under that downcast gaze is infinite compassion and consolation, and the promise of universal forgiveness. Therein lay the appeal for the first Japanese converts, embracing a more accessible Kannon, and for the many in the twentieth century who seek the elusive embrace of a nurturing creator—a motherly God, who may shake her head in disappointment at the follies and crimes of her children but never cast them out entirely. It is for that reason the hidden Christians of Kyushu elevated the Mother of God to a position of worship equal to, if not higher than, the deity she bore. She is Wisdom the saint, chaste Diana, pure in body and in heart, clothed from head to foot in the shapeless blue of the deep ocean, author of an entirely spiritual love.

There are few women in this world who fit such a distant and medieval ideal of the feminine. Ukyo—my anchoress isolated from the world by a carpet of fallen paulownia leaves, who never uttered an unkind word that wasn't absolutely deserved—fit that ideal in my mind, and for that reason I distanced myself from her even further. She represented something I feared to damage.

And the Virgin represented everything I wished my mother had been. I yearned desperately for mother's forgiveness, but I would not ask for it. We had betrayed one another mutually, and the resentment on my part was still too strong to carry me to the side of her grave. In her place I adored the Virgin Mother, and silently opened my heart with all its sins to her judgment. Let her be strict with her punishment, I told myself, for God knows I deserve it.

I felt nothing in return, but that did not keep me away from church. Though I was still no Christian, and would not pray for a forgiveness I was too proud to think I deserved, or needed, however much it was naively promised to me, I often went to hide myself in her womb that is the nave. There, the knowledge that I was a sinner and the small reassurance of sanity that that was comforted me. There I wallowed in my despair and left it behind when I returned to the outside world. Head hung in my own semblance of prayer, I cried for my parents for the first and last time—albeit for the unconditional love that had never been mine to lose, but I grieved nonetheless.

Despite this I continued to hurt the women who came in contact with me. I killed again. And, with nothing and no one to prevent me, I killed a third time. With each body I grew less and less able to blame the incidents on accident, and more and more anxious to use caution and hide my identity. The impulsiveness of the first time, the knee-jerk reaction to repulsion that it had been, remained; but plans now began to unfold in my mind when I was with a woman: practicality, location, method of execution, exit strategy, alibi.

For me it was not an issue of morality. Morals are arbitrary things whose rights and wrongs do not physically exist in the world, but are instead contrived by men who dare not look into the well of the human heart and see how deep its vices run, let alone glimpse their own reflections in the water. Oh, there is evil in the world, that is certain. And there is purity, which is the goal, the state of perfection to which everything desires an impossible return, down to its most basic, atomic level. Purity which forms the core of our national identity, which compels a physical obsessiveness that I can escape no more than I can this body I was born into, or my language. I could choose to blame my sickness on a moral laxity in my environment, perpetrated by the hypocritical Shinto establishment, which abhors contamination only slightly more than concepts of right and wrong; or by the hopeless pit of Buddhist karma; or by that most invasive of all faiths, that promises salvation to even the most incorrigible of sinners, if only he don the garb of a professed belief that one man was the almighty God made flesh. Guilt becomes a technicality, penitence and "true" faith mere facades no spiritual probation officer can monitor. What is the use of such things when one is told that something as simple as water, that freest and most ubiquitous of substances, is enough to wash away the pollution of his evil deeds and purify his soul? What can he gain once he learns that the unlimited option of starting over fresh is as close as a bath faucet?

Surrounded by such logic as that, I could not find remorse for my sins in and of themselves. Only for the pollution that clung to me after each and every act. Only for the painful resounding of the truth that was fast becoming more and more apparent: there was something wrong in my nature. I was ill and suffered, stretched thin by the emotional ups and downs of my vile addiction, plagued by my iniquities, yet I did nothing to help myself, only to make my condition worse. And each time I asked the Virgin for meaning, each time I asked myself why I did the things I did, it was Saki who answered.

From within my mind I heard his voice as I had never heard it in life, accusing me relentlessly of the crimes I had committed, and worse. Those women whose faces and names blended senselessly together over the years, their lives were worthless. Such was evidenced by the pitiful amount of effort the authorities expended bringing their murderer to justice. For all the world knew, I might have been doing it a favor, ridding it of the extra weight of those individuals who mattered too little to be missed. I could not say they had not asked for it, either, entangling themselves with the likes of me. Recognizing in me the same contamination they may not yet have realized lay within their own souls. They had brought their own demises on themselves; I was merely an instrument of karma. Just as I had been when I killed my parents.

Yes, Kazutaka, he would whisper into my ear as I wandered alone at night, soft as the breeze rustling leaves across the pavement and whipping the collar of my coat gently against my neck—yes, Kazutaka, it was _you_ who killed them. It was you who killed your mother. You strangled the life from her.

I would close my eyes, shake my head. No, I knew that had only been a dream. Though I can recall it even now with vivid clarity—from the slender column of her throat between my hands to the sexual staccato of her gasps for breath as she called my name that only made me grasp harder—the manner of her corpse in repose did not support the reality of it. There would have been bruises on her neck, wouldn't there? But they said she overdosed, that she committed suicide—

But did I really believe that? Didn't I remember the resentment that had overwhelmed me the night before her death, when she screamed and banished me, her own son, from her side as a conspirator with that devil-child? I must have wanted to hurt her for that, for all the times she tossed me aside like a doll fallen from favor. Kazutaka . . . my Kazutaka, my poor dear brother (I would hear him singing to me), you _did_ kill her. Don't you realize? You have killed her a hundred times. Why do you continue to resist what you know in your heart to be true? You and I are the same. We share the same defect. We need each other.

They broke us, he would taunt in an intimate moment. Make her pay for what she did to you. Make them all pay, each and every one! They are all guilty, polluted, and damned. . . . And I was not strong enough to resist his command. Slowly, the grinding gears of the internal clock would slow, the ticks of the second hand become fewer, fainter, until without a sound it would suddenly stop, and the pulse beneath my fingers, die.

It sounds strange, I know, for a thinking man, a man of science, to speak of hearing the voice of his dead brother in his mind. I might be tempted to call it the result of a mental disorder that caused auditory hallucinations. After all, I had a history of psychosis in my family on my mother's side. Call it what one wish, though, Saki remained with me. Within me. Even if in the genetic material that bound us. My small pieces of consolation, scattered here and there, like random blocks of an unfinished quilt stitched tenuously together, could not erase nor cover up that innate bond. Mother had said there was a demon inside of Saki. Now, years after his death, I was only beginning to discover that with his last breath he had passed it along to me.

—

Unable to end my suffering, and equally unable to purge myself of Saki's sinister influence, I was forced to lead a sort of double life. During the day I was a medical student, one of the school's most promising, dabbling in such obscure and controversial areas of research as cloning while holding my residency at the university hospital. Within the safety of theoretical posturing I criss-crossed the inarguable line separating the ethical from the unethical; and in the dark of night I destroyed it completely, drowning my mental anguishes in the debauchery of the materially corrupt, finding solace in the manifold manifestations of the profane.

It was a balance that was inherently unbalanced. I could not persist in that state for long. But while I did, it became dangerous for me to be with women. Misogyny was a terrible drug which constantly demanded a greater high, and I doubted my ability to suppress and contain my urges as time wore on. I resolved to regard a woman's company as a treat, with which came certain rules for conduct—ritualistic rules that, when broken, disrupted the fragile barrier that separated my rational mind from the monster inside me. So long as these tacit rules were adhered to, I could pretend to a certain amount of normalcy, and, vicariously, contentment.

If the thought of being intimate with a woman disgusted me, I turned those emotions into an appreciation for the male. It was the '80s. There were plenty of young college men looking for the guiding hand of a _sempai_, silently agreeing not to look for deeper meaning in those brief physical encounters or expect any in return.

There was one young man I will call S, a nineteen-year-old with the most hypnotic eyes who worked at a coffee shop I frequented as a student. His face only remains vivid in my memory because one day he came to me at the hospital with a shiner around his right eye. He won it in a fight in the lobby of a movie theater, he said, or something equally trite; I did not care about the particulars. The sight of the bruise on his otherwise flawless face aroused my immediate interest. As he sat on the edge of the bed in one of the private rooms, I covered the offended eye with gauze bandages. He laughed as I tenderly wound the bandages around his head, unsure where my sudden nurturing impulse had come from; after all, it was nothing more than your ordinary black eye.

"Beautiful," I said when I had finished, and I think for a moment he thought I meant my handiwork. He laughed. He could not have known how his already fair appearance had been transformed merely by the bandages, or how much he resembled grandfather's patient. Rather I am sure he believed I had a medical fetish, that scrapes and bruises made me hard.

One moment I leaned close to him to secure the bandage at the back of his head, and the next my lips were against his neck. The gauze possessed that ubiquitous medicinal smell, and as I breathed it in I closed my eyes and thought of that man with the strange eyes. I pushed S down onto the bed, undressing us both. He did not ruin the illusion, either: he was into it, his laughter gone, writhing impatiently as he facilitated the removal of his pants. He could not have known how elegant and tragic a composition he made, lying there just slightly akimbo, wearing nothing but a stark white bandage over one eye, and a stark white shirt pulled down around his elbows. So eager was I to take my illusion of grandfather's patient that I may have been a little too rough in penetration; but he reminded me so much of that man I could not help myself. Enough, at least, to stir the flesh, and make me want to cry in gratitude if I squinted or the light caught him at the right angle, even if he was not a perfect reproduction.

I avoided S after that and never saw him again. I did not want to. The experience had been so surreal it was embarrassing. I shuddered when I thought of how I might have contaminated the pure memory of grandfather's patient with my depravity. It was one thing to retrieve his visage that was burned into my memory while I touched myself. It was quite another to dress an individual up as my idol just to fuck it. The whole affair reeked of blasphemy. And, of course, at the same time set in the bitter disappointment of realizing how far S was from being that man in the photograph.

The affair spurred me to re-examine the details surrounding grandfather's patient. I became obsessed with the mystery of his death. No, that isn't exactly right. The cause of his death was clear, exsanguination by severing the major blood vessels of the wrist. In short, suicide, cut and dry.

What was a mystery was his life. My grandfather recorded in the faithful manner of a doctor still recently graduated, still passionate about detail, how he with his own disbelieving eyes saw the wounds heal over on the man's wrists the first and second times he cut himself. "While I did press gauze to the wounds to stop the bleeding," he wrote in his journal, "that cannot account for the rapidity of the healing process itself, or the fact that where there should have been a profuse amount of blood flowing from the incisions, there was little more than a trickle. The best way I can describe it is as sap oozing from the bark of a tree.

"As for the miraculous healing of the wound itself, this was not an illusion caused by the application of pressure. The incisions were too deep to cause the edges of the skin to simply appear to be stitching themselves back together. And yet as the hours progressed this is precisely what appeared to be happening. The next day, in fact, the incision was covered by a raised pink welt, still raw, but as if one had only scraped the very surface of the skin without cutting into it."

The same went for that bandaged eye. Gouged by the patient in one of his rare fits of mad lucidity, grandfather recorded, by the time the dressing was to be changed the eye had healed itself, without leaving so much as a trace of the injury.

If his account were to be believed, then what he described was no less than miraculous. The patient's tissues would have had to produce new cells at an incredible pace unseen in any animal in order to heal an otherwise mortal wound so rapidly. That alone made him an incredibly rare specimen. Given that the patient had supposedly never eaten or drunk in grandfather's presence either, and his physical health should have been very poor indeed, not at all conductive to the normal processes of cellular reproduction, this rapid healing seemed even more improbable.

The fact that the man did not eat or drink or even sleep was incredible in and of itself. So incredible that oft times I spent long hours into the night unable to sleep myself, simply trying to deduce from the wording if grandfather's account were in actuality an exaggeration. Ultimately I convinced myself he was not that kind of doctor. Nor was he one to practice faulty medicine or delve into metaphors. If he said the patient did not do any such thing in his presence or to his knowledge, then he did no such thing in grandfather's presence or to his knowledge.

At the time I could not fathom such an existence. Did the patient know thirst and hunger, were they great, or had his body grown numb to its needs? Wouldn't he go mad without rest, only sitting in ennui staring into space beside an open window like some elderly patient with dementia? Or was it in fact sleep that drove him to madness, and nightmares that came with it? Being no stranger to the demons that haunt the exhausted mind myself, I sympathized with that man, who must have dwelt so wholly in that unimaginable hell of which I had only a taste in comparison. To live like that for eight years, what a truly pitiable existence it must have been.

My heart ached for him in that perfect state of hopelessness—that agony that is so concentrated in the crucifix, or in the sad smile of Mary forced to watch her son's frightful death, that those living in this comfortable and stagnant time cannot begin to imagine. Defeated, abandoned by the world, a martyr recognized by no one, left to die alone. True, the patient was not quite alone, for he had my grandfather and the nurses who tended to him; but being the object of someone's scientific observations is the same, any man of science will tell you, as being alone.

—

Through his pitiful image, and through the medicine I studied meticulously so that I might understand him better—by focusing on these things I found a mental solace into which I could escape from the pain of daily existence. For a short while, I found, I could shut out my troubled thoughts and feelings of emptiness and concentrate on the certainties (where they existed), and on solving the enigma of the uncertainties.

By this time Oriya was already long gone. We hardly kept in touch, aside from a regular letter to tell the other we were well, the weather was well, that life in general was well . . . not much more than that. He kept me up to date on his father's condition, and was my only way of hearing about Ukyo, as she and I came to the conclusion mutually that it was best we did not speak unless in cases of emergency. Having no family or friends, really, to speak of—let alone that I wanted to speak of to him—I told him instead of my studies, and my aspirations once I received my doctorate. Those must have been very dry letters indeed; however, he acknowledged each one with a practiced voice of graciousness that I imagine he picked up quickly in his business in Kyoto.

It was welcoming to read, yet at the same time exposed the superficiality of our correspondence. Neither of us would deny that we avoided our true feelings when writing those letters. I, for one, could not share with him my loneliness, my crimes, or my passions without the risk of alienating myself from him even further. And between his lines of perfectly cordial text, I read his awkwardness, and his desire to forget the experience we shared that night I killed the woman who looked like my mother—a desire to pretend it never happened, and that I was not the kind of person his conscience told him I was.

I could stand that awkwardness no longer. Craving his physical company as I had not in years, I bought a ticket to go and see him one weekend. It was the weekend of a conference the head of my department had wanted to attend, but was prevented from doing so. Since the conference was being held in Kyoto, I offered to go in his stead, knowing I would find Oriya there as well. I did not tell Oriya I was coming.

I found him in one of the old capital's entertainment districts, in a gaudy building that had somehow survived all the fires and development of the last several centuries. When his father had taken ill and returned to the family home in Tokyo to recover, Oriya—who as an adolescent had vowed never to get involved in a business of such questionable ethics—that is, back in the optimistic days, before I became something he loathed—had offered to manage the Kokakurou, a high-class brothel that fronted as an equally high-class restaurant.

I say offered, though that implies a certain sense of ambivalence. I know for a fact it took more than a father's brush with death to rekindle the flame of filial piety that had been weak in Oriya's person from the beginning; and it took more than a sense of filial piety to make that young man I had loved for being pure of heart offer himself to manage such a shady business, no matter how grand and romantic its history. Perhaps he thought he could bring a sense of logic to the establishment, that he could conduct the business as a scientist would, coordinating dates and calculating accounts, and shuffling a trade of sexual services no differently than he might oversee the menu or the building's up-keep; but he was not a man of science. Perhaps he had something to prove to himself, in order to compensate for the chaos I had injected into his life.

In any case, whether he deemed it appropriate to say so or not, I blamed myself for his exodus to that place that looked to be from a time long past, and to dreamy Kyoto.

When I arrived at the Kokakurou, it was early afternoon, and a maid in plainclothes bade me to step inside while she fetched the master. As she retreated down the hall, calling to Oriya that there was a Mr Muraki to see him, I glanced around the establishment. The meeting room was unadorned but for a scroll painting and small arrangement of flowers in the alcove, but the simplicity of that decoration against the blank walls, the immaculate tatami mats on the floor, belied a financial security and pride and a careful aesthetic that was absolutely essential to the nature of the establishment's service. I knew that if I were to catch a glimpse of one of the _tayuu_ supported by his family, in all her imposing layers of brocades and oils and lacquers, the vibrant reds and blacks and golds, I might begin to understand the richness and the mystery of the place that thus far eluded me.

I did not have long to look, for Oriya appeared soon after. His appearance surprised me. His hair, a vanity of his since our early days of college, fell long over his shoulders and back. It was around October or November, and he wore a thick, striped kimono under a haori patterned with violet asters. Gone was the boy I used to know who would never be seen in anything other than shirtsleeves and trousers, the pencil tucked inexorably behind his ear exchanged for a long smoking pipe; yet even in such a formal manner of attire he still managed a certain rumpled air that I recognized with relief.

He was just as surprised to see me, only showed it better than I. At first he stared at me as though at a spirit, then pushed the hair out of his eyes for a better look, and his gaze hardened. "What are you doing here?"

I told him about the conference, and that being in town I could not miss the chance to stop by and pay my respects. For once, it was the absolute truth, but he crossed his arms and regarded me suspiciously.

"What," I said, "no, 'How've you been, old friend?' It's been a long time, Oriya."

"Forgive me if I say it hasn't been long enough." His manner, though polite, and peppered unsuccessfully with the Kyoto dialect, possessed a roughness that had not been quite so obvious in the past. It was a curious mixture. "I am still finding it hard to figure out. Where I stand, that is."

"In Kyoto?"

"With you."

Right to the point, Oriya, as usual. I smiled. "If you doubt my intentions, you can call the front desk at the hotel where I'm staying. I'm sure they'll be happy to tell you about the conference—"

He sighed and lowered his eyes in defeat. "Honestly, Muraki, I could care less if you're lying. You know perfectly well what I mean."

I did. That night on the stairs of his apartment building would forever remain a barrier between us, no matter how often I came to visit him, and I could not deny that the one who erected it was I. Still, it pained me to be treated this way by Oriya, even though it was no less than what I deserved. It might have pained me more if he had pretended nothing had changed.

"I haven't come to beg your forgiveness or your understanding," I told him simply, even then feeling I was treading a very fine line. "I did not come here to speak of the past. I came because you are my friend, and I miss your company."

He softened when I said that. Even so, I'm sure he questioned my sincerity.

"I was hoping to see with my own eyes what you had made for yourself here."

Oriya exhibited none of the shame I believed he would have as a purveyor of licentiousness. If anything, he held himself with a subdued sense of pride. The restaurant was not "my father's place" but "my place" in his sentences. The further we wandered into the complex, with its lavish dining rooms that seemed to be lifted straight from the pages of an _ukiyo-e_ pamphlet, the better I began to understand the reason for this change. He took me out back to show me the Kokakurou's garden. There we were surrounded by lush evergreens, moss-blanketed rock formations and sculpture, and a pond where, with its tranquil sound of lapping water, the last of the maple leaves to fall drifted on the surface like the bright red corpses of carp. In the solitude of that enclosed space, the intimacy of which Oriya felt secure enough to make me privy to, I felt safe to confess I had been aching to talk to him in person; that there was a dark fog over my thoughts I needed his help in lifting. I only needed to tell someone I trusted what was on my mind, and there was none I trusted more than him.

He shook his head and would not let me say another word. "Not here." The Kokakurou was too personal. Where I felt soothed, he felt exposed. He had no fear of the mob or the authorities, but mine was a ghost he loathed to invite in.

We agreed to meet at a neutral location in the city that night. Surrounded by the faceless multitudes of the weekend crowd and the cold, impersonal lights of the skyscrapers at night, we sat at a booth in a lounge where no one might recognize us, sipping drinks by the window while dreamy background music played softly out of the speakers. Oriya was once again transformed. In his well-tailored wool suit he blended in with the individuals on business trips who haunted the establishment. I could not help wondering when he had begun to care so much about image.

He told me he had been following my "exploits" in the news. Prior to my trip I had suspected he might accuse me once he felt the opportunity was right to do so. I did not fault him that: he had every right to release some of the resentment he had bottled up for the last few years.

"Do you remember those graduate student deaths in the news a while back? The murders at our old campus?"

"What about them?"

"I thought you would. They've been on my mind of late."

When I said nothing, he shook his head slowly. "Dammit, Muraki, at least pretend you feel something human. I thought a doctor was supposed to _protect_ life."

"You're absolutely right. He is."

"Then _why_ do you do this? Help me figure it out!"

I shook my head. He was exasperated, he did not know what he was asking.

"You're an intelligent man. Your mother was a Christian, for god's sake."

I wanted to ask him not to speak of my mother. "That happens to be one of the few things that did not rub off. . . . In any case, that sort of thing is precisely why I have to get away from there."

"I don't get the connection."

"I'm being smothered in that place, Oriya, in academia. It's absurd, the politics . . . I can't conduct the kind of research there I long to, the kind befitting my grandfather's name. Surely you of all people understand that."

"No. Don't compare my decision to what you do."

"Come, come! We're like goldfish in a pond that just keeps stagnating and stagnating. There's nothing for me to _breathe_ there—"

"Then leave."

Like he had done, in other words. If only it were so easy for me. I reached for my glass as I searched for my response. To him my action would have appeared coolly executed, but beneath the table I wrung the material of my slacks in my fist.

"Where do you suggest I go?" I asked him, pronouncing each syllable exactly. "Should I come here, to Kyoto?"

As I expected, he visibly flinched.

"I do things . . . that I _detest_, Oriya."

"And yet you continue to do them."

His righteous tone wounded me. Didn't he know how difficult this was for me? "I don't get any pleasure from this kind of existence. I . . . I need to go into practice for myself. I'm just spinning wheels staying at the university. I've been approached by a clinic in Tokyo—"

"When do you receive your doctorate?"

I fell silent, and for a moment was moved by a sense of hope from his question. "Four to five months. I should have it by the beginning of next April."

He leaned back in his seat. Absently he ran his fingers over the base of his wine glass. Something weighed heavily on his mind, as the furrow in his brows told me.

At last he said, "Have you considered going into private practice?"

Had I? I could not help a smile, eager to see where this train of interrogation went. "I've given it some thought."

Suddenly he leaned forward again. Placing his elbows on the table, he put his face in his hands with a sigh, as though rubbing a fog from his eyes. "Dammit, Muraki," he muttered again. "Sometimes I forget how convincing you can be. But you're not going to take me down with you, old friend or not. I haven't forgotten what you did to—"

I never knew if he had planned to finish that sentence with "that woman" or "me." He lowered his voice even further. "I felt the life leave her right from under my fingers. And I couldn't do _anything_, Muraki! How could you do that to me?"

"I can never adequately express how deeply I regret involving you in my affairs, Oriya," I said.

"Then you should not come asking for favors."

"If only for my soul, or what remains of it?"

He looked around the restaurant as though for the assistance he would not find. At last, and with great difficulty, he said to me, "How about this instead?"

—

There in the restaurant, under cover of night, he offered me a second chance. It would not redeem our friendship, but at least he might forgive my barging in on his new life.

He told me of a client of the Kokakurou's, a regular, who had contracted a particularly virulent form of cancer. The client was wealthy, so he would pay handsomely for the services of a doctor who could treat him in his own home. Being a well-respected and visible Tokyoite politician, discretion was of the utmost importance. The client—whom I shall call Mr A—saw his illness as a potential weakness to be exploited by his rivals; and though he seemed to accept the terminal nature of his case, he was adamant the public be fooled for as long as possible. I saw his case as a personal challenge and an interesting start to my career outside the university, and was eager to meet with him upon my return to Tokyo.

I found Mr A a pitiful specimen. My first encounter with him recalled for me the days of my youth browsing through some of the more curious of grandfather's old files. His skin had an unhealthy color and hung loose on his frame and skull, both of which had been used to carrying much more weight. He moved with a care that seemed incongruous with his stocky body type; I imagine he felt a fragility of existence that those he came in contact with could not imagine for themselves. His sunken, puffy eyes that fixed silently on me when I spoke in terms I cannot be sure he understood, perhaps once warmer, now possessed that shady, cynical quality of the stereotypical morally corrupt politician, though I could not say with any certainty whether his illness were responsible for that as well. I was glad for it, however, for it meant I could express my opinions without fear of harming my position in his household: I already knew where I stood.

There was an ugly scar that curved across one side of his back. I first saw it when he rolled over on the bed away from me during an examination. He had had a section of that lung excised a couple decades before, he explained to me when he noticed what he assumed was my discomfort, due to complications with a strain of tuberculosis he had carried around since childhood. He laughed derisively when I expressed my surprise that medical professionals conducted such barbaric surgeries even into the '60s and '70s when there were such effective medicines available to treat the disease today. More than that, though, it was a curious scar, like what might be left from the amputation of a wing.

Perhaps it was due of this previous blow to his immune system, his doctors seemed to think, that the usual treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation, had little or no effect on his progress fighting the disease. That was to say nothing about the curious absence of the actual tumor. My curiosity was piqued. The gene that instilled in me the desire to cure my patient asserted its dominance, and I searched his medical records dating back decades and the most obscure journals available to me, looking for anything that would fit Mr A's symptoms. I sent blood samples to some of my old professors, pulling favors and begging their opinion, keeping the identity of the samples' donor a secret.

When I did find the answer that fit, like the last missing piece of a puzzle, I was not that surprised.

Apparently, neither was Mr A, hence—I now understood perfectly—his need for secrecy that at times became a deep paranoia.

Neither was his wife surprised by the verdict. By that time I was used to her short, impatient manner toward her husband. Mrs A was a good fifteen years younger; I surmised she had not been present at the time of his lung surgery, but had most likely replaced some other stubborn woman finally unable to handle the baggage that came with it. Just as she was unwilling to handle the baggage of Mr A's alleged cancer.

She was a proud and jealous woman, unapologetically ambitious, and very good at hiding her attraction to me. I made sure I did everything in my power to remain on her good side. Standing behind Mr A's desk one day with her back to the window, arms crossed, as though it were already her office, she confessed to me,

"I know it isn't cancer."

I smiled. "What makes you say that?"

She looked offended. "I know what cancer looks like, Dr Muraki, and that isn't it. Though I know my husband would like everyone to think it is, and that's why he pays for those unnecessary treatments that only make his condition worse—"

"His health should improve now that I have started him on the proper medication. It will be expensive, but at least this treatment will have a positive effect."

"However, even that is only temporary, isn't it? There is no real cure."

I lowered my eyes and removed my glasses. When I was a child, doctors did not name terminal illnesses. For that matter, they hardly named mental disorders either, as though to do so, and acknowledge the reality of the situation, would invite some unspeakable disaster. But that was not what coaxed a grin from me then in that dim office; it was not for her sake that I put on such a face, but, rather, because of her.

"Don't treat me like some weak-constitutioned little woman, Mr Muraki," she chided me like a mother might; and I could not ignore the switch in titles. "I am neither ignorant nor blind. Who do you think has been maintaining that loaf's image since he took ill?

"We haven't been intimate for years," she told me point-blank, as though she thought the question had been on my mind. "I know he would rather spend his time and money on fancy whores and I have no qualms with that lifestyle. Don't deny it; he spoke of you as a friend of the Kokakurou house specifically to me. Are you surprised he would be so forthcoming to his own wife? In any case, I came to accept it years ago, Mr Muraki, and I am no embittered, scheming wife despite this veneer. _This_," she gestured to indicate said veneer, "is the result of years of putting up with his vagary, eroding my patience until what remains for you to see is this hardened core."

"Then you possess extraordinary will power, ma'am. Mr A is not an easy patient; I cannot imagine he's any more pliant a husband."

A smile, albeit brief, flashed across her lips at my compliment and sympathy. Then it was gone and she growled, "My husband is a child and an idiot." She paused, as though the thought had just struck her: "You know, I cannot help thinking sometimes that this disease is no less than he deserves, that it's karmic. Is that cruel of me, Dr Muraki?"

I was back to being a doctor again. "Yes," I said, "but our most natural reactions oftentimes are."

"I suppose it would be different if it were just his fraternizing with younger women," she thought aloud. "It's the men that disgust me. Oh, I suppose it would be one thing if my husband were a homosexual; then at least there would be no questioning in my mind the farcical nature of our marriage. But there is something inherently . . ." She bunched her shoulders. "Disgusting," she snarled, "about a man who can't decide what he wants to screw."

The smile that seemed glued on my lips felt stale when she said that. I acknowledged the smile and wondered why I still held on to it. No, I did not think of her statement as something that might as well have been meant for me. We were discussing her husband and only her husband; such an opinion had nothing to do with my affairs. Yet the opulent office suddenly felt very restricting.

Mrs A looked as though she wanted to take back her crude choice of words, then recanted. "My husband's an idiot," she settled for.

My own opinion was far removed from hers. Though I had heretofore been more moved by the oddity of Mr A's malady than by Mr A himself, I thought it admirable of him when he asked me if I would help him end his life, when the pain of day to day existence simply became too much to bear. I was seeing other clients and had an office in a small clinic at the time and was loathe to risk losing the comfort that the steady work provided me. At the same time, that part of me deep inside where Saki lay urged me to accept his offer. Not just for the new experience it would be, the prospect of which gripped me tight and would not let go. It was only the compassionate thing to do, that voice inside me insisted, to facilitate an end to his suffering—his suffering which modern medicine had unnaturally and sadistically drawn out. There was no one to whom his death would prove personally detrimental, what with his children estranged and wife disinterested, and the latter showed signs of becoming a leader in the Diet after his departure from it.

So, in the end, I agreed; and Mr A passed away of respiratory failure due to complications that only aggravated a life-long weakness. I will never forget how he looked more determined as he watched me insert the needle into his IV than he had at any point in his treatment until then.

And so he made a murderer of me once again, providing the positive reinforcement the likes of me certainly did not need. How could I be expected to see my kills for the crimes they were after that? That early morning, it felt as though I were putting a dark era in my life to death along with him—an era of doubt, holding me back from realizing my true purpose—and he left me feeling justified absolutely. I had little idea at that point that it was simply the beginning of a madness that, like Mr A's virus, would continue to consume my life bit by bit—a madness of reason, steadily digesting that darkness with the rest of me, and rendering it into the nutrients I so desperately needed. Thus, though certainly not in the way he had wanted it, Oriya had his revenge.

Months before, I had called him with the news. I was not of the habit of sharing my clients' personal lives with Oriya, and he was not of the habit of asking. However, the case of Mr A turned out to concern him directly.

"Why should I need to know whether it's cancer or not?" he said in a sigh. "He leaves his money here and that's all I'm worried about."

"Yes, but it's what else he might be leaving there that should worry you. Cancer isn't communicable."

"You say that as though you almost wish he did have cancer."

I leaned over my desk, rubbing my brow with one hand as I held the receiver with the other. "Do your girls use protection with their clients?"

"I try to impress upon them the importance, no matter what their clients might tell them, but they're their own women. I can't force them to do anything, just trust that they'll have the sense to exercise good judgment."

"Listen to me, Oriya. I say this because you're my good friend, but you need to have them tested."

It was then I could hear the anxiety creep into his voice. "Why? What does he have?"

"A disorder that's called acquired immune deficiency syndrome in English. Do you know what that is?"

"Yeah, I've heard of it," he said before I could entirely finish.

"Then you know where it comes from, how it gets passed, how dangerous it is. . . ."

"How can I not in this business?" There was silence on the other end for a few seconds. I imagine he probably sat down and caught his breath, preparing himself physically just as much as mentally for the possible ramifications of what I was telling him. At that time, to say a person had AIDS was to hand him or her a death sentence. I felt for Oriya, and the terrible position he was in because of the information I had. Yet I never considered not sharing it to be an option. I love him too much for that. "God . . ." he swore. "You think he could have infected one of our girls?"

"Or, as much as I hate to say it, that he might have contracted the virus from one of them."

He swore again. No one could have blamed him if, in addition to God, he cursed his father and Mr A's continued patronage that had been so ignorantly coddled out of a sense of tradition. When he had calmed from the initial shock, his voice reached me down the line like that of a man who had been physically and emotionally drained, and he said simply, "Thank you, Muraki."

He need not have said any more.

I considered us even on that score. With that information, he would be able to save a few livelihoods including his own, meaning I owed him nothing for the referral to Mr A. Of course, regarding the other matter, nothing would ever compensate for the damage I caused. I embraced this slight victory.

—

Since then I have lived the hectic and selfless life of a doctor, and moreover that of one pulled two ways at once by his work in the clinic and his travels to visit those clients who have the assets to afford it at their residences. In that way, I felt somewhat like one of Oriya's girls myself. I began to wonder how I had ever had time for personal, physical indulgences in my university days.

Of intellectual pleasures, however, there remained a steady stream. Eventually I gained a reputation for my interest in obscure conditions, which encouraged baffled or impatient doctors to place those unpleasant cases at my doorstep all too happily. On top of treating my patients—and sometimes with their unwitting help—I continued to conduct research on the side into controversial subjects that I knew would never be taken seriously by the medical community no matter how much empirical data I gathered. My colleagues would have laughed and written me off as some hapless adventurer searching in vain for a nonexistent fountain of youth if they knew what I was after. In my own mind, it was not preposterous to think that immortality was out there for the taking—that the only secret left was how to grasp that knowledge that was waiting for us, hidden right under our noses. Whether the key lay in cloning or something more sinister, less egalitarian, it was my self-claimed destiny to discover.

As for my social life, it seemed busier than ever. Only the circles I moved in changed. Human beings thrive on the connections they form, but none more so than scientists. It is the bane of the profession that we are dependent on the good graces of bureaucrats and businessmen and politicians, that golden triangle that is so fundamentally remote from and yet interconnected with the academic world. They need us for what we can give them, and we need them for their patronage even more; it is a symbiotic relationship of truly mutual dependency.

And no rule in this relationship is more important than the rule of discretion. In few countries is this better understood than in Japan. While the honesty of a whistle-blower in lieu of calamity and corruption is acknowledged as "the right thing," there is a certain repugnancy to it as well—a holdover from the Confucian days that deems even the most well-intentioned betrayal a gross failure of the system.

My clients had none of this to fear from me. Perhaps it was my own upbringing that had made me such a discreet person, my medical heritage, or a natural outgrowth of the sense of shame that never allowed me to speak of my own home life. Indubitably I had my own secrets to guard jealously, so it was not difficult to treat the secrets of others in the same manner. In any case, their sins often became too wrapped up in my own to speak of openly, as they did with the Kakyouin group.

I was flown to the home of the chairman of the group, Mr Kakyouin himself, owner of a chain of luxury cruise liners, who was at the time living in Hong Kong. His ten-year-old daughter, Tsubaki, suffered from a congenital heart defect which left her in a weakened condition—nothing out of the ordinary; but it was because of the rumors he had heard about me, rather than my public track record, that I was offered the job. He did not beat around the fact that his daughter would need a transplant if she were to survive into her adolescence, let alone adulthood, and he feared that a suitable donor would not be found in time to save her. Fed up with the uncertainty of waiting lists, Kakyouin was desperate to find a more reliable and immediate solution. He knew how I had judged on such difficult ethical problems in the past, and—his own sense of ethics being remarkably loose, though I suppose not much more so than the average corporate magnate—deemed it acceptable if I used whatever means necessary to save his daughter's life, and secure her a healthy heart.

Kakyouin was no innocent to the subject of organ donation and transplants himself. He spoke to me of staking out an active role in the black market trade of human organs. Of course, his vision only extended so far as it involved finding a donor for his daughter, but at the time I ignored his selfishness in favor of the opportunity it afforded me to continue my research unfettered by the legal restraints of a clinical setting. With the moral ramifications of signing such a contract I concerned myself little; after all, as a doctor my priority was to save lives, yes, but I was at the same time obligated to follow the orders given me, and the money. In this way, I convinced myself that while I shared Kakyouin's sin, I did not share the responsibility for what I did under his patronage.

When I stepped into the Hong Kong house with its refined Western ambiance, I felt for once as though _I_ were being observed, rather than the usual other way around. It was a pair of eyes that belonged to a ten-year-old girl that followed me unseen throughout the house that morning, until we finally met face to face in her father's office. Kakyouin left me there alone, and a few minutes later her face appeared through a hesitantly cracked door. Somehow I thought, with my limited experience with children, and with Kakyouin's schemes fresh in my mind as well, that she would recognize that evil thing in me that Saki had once insisted was there, and fear me.

I was surprised when, instead, I watched her initial nervousness vanish from her face at the sight of me, and a grin quickly replace it. She thought I was an angel. As is the way with the innocent and spontaneous ejaculations of children, I suppose the figure I cut must have been somewhat like those ubiquitous images of the angelic, clad all in white and backlit by the grand office windows. Perhaps too she expected an older or less striking man than I when she heard the word "doctor." In any case, her sudden exuberance momentarily took me aback.

Then the irony struck me. Saint Joan of Arc had been asked at her trial, regarding her conviction that a beautiful man, an angel of God, had spoken to her, how she was able to distinguish a good angel from an evil one. The difference was not always so apparent on the surface. For Tsubaki I would gladly become that angel, that comforting and distant presence that she wanted me to be. Whether of God or of the fallen it mattered little, for both were given the power to do great and terrible things.

If it is possible for girls of ten to feel love, I do not know; but she did at least believe she was in love with me. From the beginning she was attracted to my presence like a moth to a flame, unaware I was there to set alight so much for her petty existence. To say she was patient through her many and sometimes physically trying examinations and treatments was an understatement. Oftentimes she genuinely looked forward to them, for they meant a chance to visit with me, to tell me about all that had happened while I was away, and to win from me that smile she so loved to receive—that smile that I imagined might have mirrored the patient smiles of the unseen old gods, enamored of the simple pleasures of human life. She never suspected mine might not be genuine. When she took her medicine dutifully to impress me, even though I knew she hated its bitter taste, I was not moved to feel anything more for her than I already did as a doctor for his patient. But I was content to let her think I was.

She was a giving child, as giving as the naive and privileged daughter of an ocean liner mogul could be. So it did not surprise me when I arrived one day to hear her story of a local girl who sold flowers door to door. The girl's name was Irene, she told me ecstatically, and she was the same age as Tsubaki. When she offered Tsubaki a camellia—Tsubaki's namesake—Tsubaki knew they were fated to be the best of friends; and even though they hardly spoke each other's language, it felt to her as though they understood one another perfectly.

Her story made little in the way of an impression on me then. I thought Tsubaki would soon tire of a playmate with whom she was not remotely equal in class or experience. But as time wore on, I could not help but notice how a truly deep bond had formed between the two girls. Tsubaki would try out whatever new bits and pieces of Chinese and English she had learned from her friend on me. Even though her condition was in steady decline, her wide eyes lit up with such passion and hope when she spoke of her Irene, and I could not deny being somewhat jealous that someone else had diverted her attention so wholly from myself. Where Tsubaki's health was concerned, my authority by right should have been paramount.

I determined I must meet Irene.

The time approached when Kakyouin would return to Japan with his daughter, and she, reluctant to leave her friend, begged to be allowed to bring Irene aboard the ship with her. At first, Kakyouin would not be swayed, even for the good the girl's company would do Tsubaki's health. On the other hand, my curiosity was piqued by Tsubaki's continued insistence the two girls' meeting was fate. Intuition has more to do with our biological reactions than any external factors, if we only know how to listen to our own cells. So, pretending that the matter was already decided, I invited Irene in for blood tests under the guise of inoculating her for the cruise and subsequent vacation in Japan. It probably goes without saying, but the results were positive. She was a perfect match to Tsubaki.

That proof was all that was needed to convince Kakyouin—Kakyouin who cared nothing for his daughter's emotional well-being. To him Irene was not an individual, a playmate, and his only child's solace. She was a healthy heart, and the poor street peddler's body that heart was trapped in, nothing but a disposable vessel. I was to be prepared to conduct the transplant at sea.

I could say I will never forget how radiant those two girls looked at the outset of their first and final voyage together, how wide were their smiles as they held each other close, or how distraught and inconsolable Tsubaki was when Irene suddenly disappeared from the very ship in the middle of the night; but that would be a lie, for those things were forgettable. As forgettable as the surgery that took place in the hidden operating room in the cargo hold of Kakyouin's prize ship, the _Queen Camellia_, that blended seamlessly together with every other operation conducted there in my mind. There was nothing to make this case any more significant other than its absolute irony. Damning as it may have been to cut up a child's truest love to save her life, it was only a drop in the bucket of my deeds, and I did not flinch when it fell.

—

What did move me was Kakyouin's behavior after the operation's success: it moved me to indignation. With his daughter's life saved, and whatever guilt he had felt about her condition assuaged, he no longer saw a need for the hidden chamber in the _Queen Camellia_ or the organ harvesting business. Apparently he seemed to see himself as some sort of moral paragon before the whole affair and that simply abandoning the black market would be enough to restore his name to what it had been in that mythical time. The job fell to me to remind him that he was not alone in his twisted game; various levels of sensitive information had been entrusted to his financial backers and to the beneficiaries of the services of all walks of the social elite life. Did Kakyouin truly expect he could cut his ties with them and they would simply fold their hands, keep their mouths shut to the grave?

Despite his calm exterior, little changes in his pupils and his breathing and posture gave away his unease when I reminded him of this. It was fear that ultimately must have convinced him. As for myself, I will not pretend I was motivated by a sense of righteousness, let alone egalitarianism. No, I learned long ago that human lives are not equal, that some individuals are simply worth more than others. A celebrity or a leader, whose wealth and notoriety directly affect the people and the world around him, must be afforded more rights and privileges in order to protect his existence than a vagrant or a day laborer, for whose loss the world will not even blink. To pretend otherwise is not only idiotic and naive but socially destructive. Even I who hate society understand this.

Of course, just because that is the way the world works does not mean I embrace it. More to the point, as a method of survival I have been driven to excel at utilizing the system for my own goals, which were then beginning to crystallize into a clear plan. There was something about the Kakyouin group and their entire operation, however, that I detested. In that part of me that was still Kazutaka, I loathed it and my part in it; and in my scientific detachment I yearned for justice.

A justice that would come once the _Queen Camellia_ had exhausted its usefulness, naturally. A justice of my own design to be executed when I was ready to make my exit, not of the secular authorities who no longer understood what the word meant. For the meantime I needed the fresh specimens, and I needed Tsubaki. Just as I could not end my own life, it seemed impossible for me to willfully end my position within the Kakyouin group. I was hooked on their unique drug of self-service and impunity from mores and the law and God—their behaving as though in their floating palace they were free not only of any national allegiance but of all sense of responsibility as well—and I could not walk away. It would take a forceful hand to rend me from the security I enjoyed there, and I found that force in Tsubaki.

I watched her condition improve every day as we gradually neared port in Japan. Even as she recovered from surgery, she was fast growing stronger than she had ever been in all my months as her physician. Afraid of her father's rejection should her health improve to a level deemed normal, I began administering her nonlethal doses of poison under the guise of medication. It was not enough to make her ill, not enough for her father—who trusted me more than he should have—to suspect foul play, but enough for her to require my periodic attention and treatment. And Tsubaki drank her "medicine" without hardly a complaint, though I knew how much it displeased her to take it. She did it for me, out of gratitude. Or out of love, or some childish conviction of it.

At the same time I began this regimen, I also revealed to her the identity of her heart donor, thus conditioning Tsubaki to find the two inseparable. In the dim inside her private chambers aboard the ship, I leaned close to her and whispered in her ear: Did she want to know a secret? A secret her father did not want her to know? The heart that was inside her, the heart that had given her a new chance at life . . . it had come from her beloved Irene.

Her mouth fell open in a gasp, and her young eyes went wide with horror at hearing that awful truth, that no child should have to hear. A smile came to my lips at her perfect reaction; and as my breath fell warm on her ear it was as the breath of an ally, the only one she had left in a den of ravenous wolves. Her father did not want me to tell her the truth, I said; he wanted Tsubaki to believe Irene had grown tired of her company and abandoned her. But she and I both knew that could never be the case. After all, even if she had grown impatient with Tsubaki (and God forbid that ever happen), where could Irene possibly go on a cruise ship in the middle of the sea? No, Irene had not left at all—I told her under hypnosis that night. Her death had been the fault of her own father and his associates, that was true, and even I who was ordered to perform the operation; but Irene's heart lived on within Tsubaki.

Her spirit lived on in Tsubaki.

She believed what I told her in that highly suggestive state and hid it away within her subconscious, deceiving all those who believed her to be a foolish child, easily lied to. Only I knew the truth, for aside from Irene—who was dead, and for all my nonsense did not inhabit Tsubaki's transplanted heart—only I had listened to Tsubaki, really listened, to all the trivial ramblings of a girl in love with the world and all that she perceived to be the good things in it. She may have been a naive child, uneducated in the darkness that existed in the world, but she was far from dumb, and knew even when I was lying. Yet she believed Irene's spirit continued to reside inside her, continuing to love Tsubaki unconditionally, waiting for the day she might seek revenge on all who had harmed the two of them—because she _wanted_ to believe it. She had no choice but to cling to that one thought that brought her hope, even if only in the sleeping recesses of her subconscious brain. It was a matter of survival that she did so.

It was in that simple way that, years later, I forced that girl of such pure heart, at the time of it a lovely young woman in the springtime of her life, to so brutally and gleefully slaughter all of those who were cruel to her, and among them her own father. Yet somehow I cannot bring myself even now to pity the poor puppet.

—

I had other motives for using Kakyouin's resources and, in particular, that hidden room aboard the _Queen Camellia_.

For some time until then I had been meditating on the possibility of resurrecting Saki. He—or rather, what part of whatever evil inhabited him that existed in the both of us—continued to haunt me throughout my adulthood, a constant voice of depravity in the back of my mind whispering foul things during moments of weakness, and clouding my judgments of those around me, accompanying me even in the operating room. Bit by bit nurturing the monster inside of me. I longed to be rid of that darkness, even as I donned it like a perfectly tailored suit. Even as I used it willfully, and cultivated from it a perverse sense of purpose.

I longed even then for the revenge that had been denied me when I was an adolescent. I resented my weakness then, and wished I could undo it, even though if I were honest with myself I would realize that at seventeen I was not strong enough physically to have overpowered Saki, let alone a Saki armed. And I longed to see him suffer for the agonies he had caused and continued to cause me, not with the quick death that had been his, but in the prolonged torment my life had become. In my mind, his image melded with that of grandfather's patient to form a strange amalgam. The abject suffering in the countenance of grandfather's patient I wanted to see on my half-brother's face; and I entertained the thought that some sin—perhaps not on par with mine and Saki's, but some great sin nonetheless—had been responsible for that man's beautiful display of pain itself.

Subsequently the patient's story of living without food or water or sleep, and grandfather's description of his survival through two suicide attempts, slowly melded into my desire to resurrect Saki, to the point where it was indistinguishable to me where one ended and the other began. Though I did not believe in the reality of such things as destiny or karma, it was more than a fortunate coincidence that sent that man to grandfather's doorstep. For surely that man held in his mysterious life the key to bringing my Saki back from the dead.

For, though it might seem poetic of me, especially in my profession, which calls at all times for objectivity and empirical proof, I cannot believe that death is absolute and irreversible. While the flesh does decay, the stuff we are made of remains eternal, however in a different form. If it can be fashioned into a human being once, why can't it again?

The belief that death cannot be undone owes much to religious traditions throughout time that claim that the moment a person dies, the various materials that made up his person—the breath, the body, the mind, in whatever archaic order they are spoken of—disperse and he becomes a fractured being, an Humpty Dumpty, that can never be put back together again in the exact same fashion. So far as death and decay destroy all matter that makes up an individual, this is true. But the restoration of the person cannot but become an entirely plausible matter so long as death is removed from the equation.

The ancients saw the logic in this, but they went about it all wrong. They considered useless and removed that one organ essential to immortal life: the brain. For what are mind and soul but energy traveling through a specific network of synapses and engrams unique to every living organism with a brainstem. We are all computers housed in these fleshy, degradable shells; cut the power and the motherboard still remains, intact and patient, waiting like a seed in the winter soil for some force to come along and trigger it once again. The same is at the heart of cloning, only the programming involved is the genetic code encapsulated in the nuclei of our cells. Therefore, so long as said synapses and engrams, and the neurons that form them physically exist in an unchanged state, a personality exists. All that remains then is to electrify the whole thing: wake the cells from their hibernation with oxygen and nutrients, and they will respond with that spark of life.

That much seemed simple. Even growing a genetic duplicate from a human egg is rather simple, comparatively speaking. Repairing tissues damaged by the natural processes of decay is another issue entirely, and a much more difficult one to accomplish.

That was where grandfather's patient entered the picture. The theory was that I had only to replicate the conditions of the mysterious ailment that allowed him to heal himself so miraculously and I might repair and sustain a body that had long been deemed dead.

That ailment, it turned out, was in fact a natural mutation in his blood. Whether the samples still remained I could not know, but I did know from grandfather's journal that at one time he had preserved slides of the patient's skin and blood, which he studied in great detail even after the man's death. At the end of the Taisho era, genetics was still a new science. Biologists knew what alleles were, but with the limits of the technology of the time, they were still more than half a century away from unraveling and understanding the code of DNA. Even the eugenic experiments of the war era, though using a more advanced foundation of knowledge than the public was aware, operated ofttimes on guesswork, like a man stumbling blindly through the dark.

My grandfather, on the other hand, needed no sophisticated computers to tell him what he discovered—what was immediately apparent upon a closer examination of the nuclei of the patient's cells: his genetic makeup was not human. For one, where the normal human nuclei contain forty-six chromosomes, his invariably contained forty-seven. It may seem like very little, a freak accident, but the implications of such a mutation are crucial. It meant that in the womb, one of the gametes that eventually became his person came from one who possessed an extra pair of chromosomes—chromosomes that could not have been of human origin, and, finding no mate with which to bond, remained on their own in all his body's cells. It was not a duplicate, but something else entirely—something grandfather recalled as "strange," whatever that meant. Moreover, aside from the man's unnatural eyes, there was never anything to suggest to my grandfather that that extra, unknown genetic material impeded his functioning in any way. That the man had developed into a healthy fetus, let alone adult, was a biological miracle that neither I nor my grandfather who had access to him could understand. And we both wondered, was this extra chromosome the key to his strange semblance of immortality? Could it be duplicated successfully?

I believed so. And apparently so did he, as his notes seemed to suggest. Suggest, as something was missing from them—the absence was not explicit, but it was obvious there was information not included there, in that journal that might be picked up and read by anyone. Until that hidden information could be found—if it even still existed—I was on my own, with the technology and the basic blueprint for fulfilling his vision but without the physical specimen, left with no other option than to experiment with what tools the field of cloning had devised for our purposes, and improvise.

In order to perform such experiments, however, I needed facilities. While the _Queen Camellia_ was safe, there were inconveniences working at sea, and circles of thought I dared not bring before Mr Kakyouin, no matter how skewed his own moral sense happened to be. I did not know where I might find a laboratory that provided the same sense of security as that one, but I did know to whom I would turn.

I remembered an old professor from my undergraduate days, a Dr Satomi who had left his position in the university for an accelerated school in Kyoto, Shion University. During his tenure at the university he had dabbled in cloning research, and it was with him that I had studied the revitalization of dead brain cells; but I imagine the academic life had taken its toll on him as well, for the mainstream scientific community was not always welcoming of such a morally ambiguous field of research, and when they were it was a tenuous, fine line on which researchers were forced to tread.

Satomi was not one of those researchers. He and I shared a stubborn passion in which the established rules factored little if at all, a sort of passion that he was not as skilled at concealing. His mind belonged to a different era, my grandfather's era. It showed on his face as well; having always appeared older than his true age, he had begun developing a slight hunch and had a wild, paranoid look about him at all times, as though his mind itself were being hunted. Still, his prestigious record must have been enough to win him a place at an upstanding private academy such as Shion. Perhaps his eccentricities even appealed to the school board in some perverse way.

He was surprised to see me, I may say even unnerved. In the many years since we had last seen each other I had matured, filled out some; I was no longer the reserved and gloomy twenty-year-old boy he had screwed one night in his lab. I was a doctor with my own practice, soon to run that quaint Tokyo clinic of my young grandfather's, a traveler amongst high society, and a more acknowledged scholar than he. He could not figure out how to treat me.

I did not have that same trouble. He would always be my professor, regardless of if I the student had surpassed him; and I treated him as such until the very end, when the ridiculousness of our farce finally struck me as too much to endure any further.

I came asking a favor—a deal that would have mutual benefit. There were underground sections of the academy that were old, outdated, and rarely visited as they had long outworn their usefulness. They were sturdy, built during the war, and perhaps it was because of that that those in charge seemed eager to keep them buried and forgotten just like those times. I wanted Satomi's blessing to build a private laboratory there where I might conduct some of my own experiments. In return, I would assist him periodically in his cloning research, checking his notes (as much as it pained him to allow me to do so) and providing him with his precious samples so long as he never asked where they came from.

What truly cinched the deal was this. He confessed freely to me upon my mere mention that he had never truly ceased his research into the theory that had ostracized him from the mainstream scientific community in the first place, almost fifteen years before: that it was possible to create an individual from artificially cultured body parts. Call it a golem or an homunculus, or perhaps more fittingly a Frankenstein's monster. Whatever the case, what he had devised went far beyond making amputees whole again, or curing degenerative diseases. Despite harsh criticism and general distrust from his peers, both on a scientific and ethical basis, and despite his own hurdles in the experimentation phase, he still believed the idea was sound, and had continued to work toward its development in secret. For some reason, he also believed I had intimate knowledge of the subject, but when I pressed him to be more specific he would clam up, and glance at me as though my denial must be tongue-in-cheek.

What I _did_ have was access to a whole slew of cadavers, organs, tissues and other body parts courtesy of the _Queen Camellia_ and Mr Kakyouin's most generous patronage. But neither party had to know about the other. So long as Satomi received his payment of samples, he was most facilitating of my requests, content to take me at my word when I reassured him everything I brought him was legal—or, at very least, untraceable to himself.

I must admit, too, that I was curious about his progress as it related to my designs for Saki. Fortunately for myself, his curiosity won out over suspicion and I got my laboratory, hidden in the sub-basement of one of the halls behind an airtight door to be opened with a card key. It was, in fact, a lab within a lab, and Satomi never knew the difference. I took the secret with me when I returned to Tokyo; and when I had had enough and went to see Oriya, in order to find, as I sat across from him over cups of impeccably brewed tea, some brief solace for my soul from the monstrosities of experiments that I conducted there.

—

When was it I started to believe in the occult—when did the supernatural shift from being a childhood curiosity in which I took no actual stock, no more than a fleeting fancy, to being an undeniable reality, as scientifically grounded as anything I encountered in my normal practice? It would seem that my training as a scientist should have immunized me to what the educated call mere folly, or superstition; but perhaps a special knack for perceiving the truth of these things existed within me all along. Perhaps it was Saki's influence that acclimated me to a sense of the paranormal, opened my eyes to the reality that lies beneath our common perception of what is real, and to the beings that inhabit it—though he would have been the first to dismiss the very idea.

In any case, whether I believed or not was not the issue. Whether I believed or not had no bearing on reality, on the truth of the matter. The choice was between embracing what I saw, or else blinding myself to the very real powers that manipulated my world, and all that they could offer me. Once I opened my mind to the possibilities of that hidden light, that brilliant darkness, I could not change my mind and simply stop the rush of information that followed naturally—that wonderful rush, overwhelming, that came with the sudden understanding that my existence until then had been an illusion, that true power was just waiting for one who dared to grab hold of it. No, once awakened to the truth, I was left only two options, neither of which was reclaiming my ignorance: I could either allow myself to be swayed by forces beyond my control, or learn to control them myself, dominate those forces and bend them to serve my will. Being a doctor, a man of will, I chose the latter. Denying it, at that point, would have been senseless and absurd. It would have been like denying the existence of air, though our senses, albeit indirectly, know it is there. We cannot see it, taste it, smell it, but we see the effects of the wind, and feel the effects of its molecules with every intake of breath.

It was during my endeavors in the Shion laboratory that I began to study the occult. Actually study it, as I did the science of medicine, as containing a truth and a method that had yet to be uncovered in physical experimentation. The university library, so extensive in so many subjects, on this particular topic only turned up more questions than answers for my insatiable mind, and secrets barely hinted at—the titles of obscure books in languages alive and dead that I thought (fortunately for myself, mistakenly) must be lost to time and the censorship of a fearful public. Titles I dare not divulge for the dangerous nature of the texts contained therein, and the unnatural things written in them. Exponentially, it seemed, each discovery led to another vast wealth of hidden information—if I only knew where to look and what sources to contact.

Naturally there were frauds, ignorant enthusiasts grasping for any part in that world so much larger than themselves, even if only by their own invention; but those apocryphal articles that were genuine became invaluable to me. Texts of the high esoteric Buddhist and Judaic sects that cataloged the names of the demonic entities and how they might be harnessed; Kabbalistic and alchemic formulas, the essences of that heretical gnosticism that runs straight through all of Western civilization; and pagan rites and incantations from all manner of primal animistic and pantheistic traditions. What they spoke of were taboo for a reason: for there was a power contained in that body of knowledge to which no mortal man or woman should be allowed access. Yet a society that rejected those truths as something superstitious—which was to be abhorred as a worse offense than those evils they actually spoke of—allowed me that access freely, and handed me the power by which I might undo the natural order of things, willfully.

On the other hand, what did it mean that I pursued such dark forces so passionately, so unconcerned for whether they were fact or fiction? That I fancied myself a Dr Faustus or Frankenstein? That I was mad, mentally unstable? I already knew as much, possessed as I was by these unnatural thoughts and urges that were at once Saki's and my own, my mother's demons and grandfather's ghosts, indistinguishable one from the other where they collided in me. But I still had a firm grasp on my wits. My rational mind, whilst given to fits of restlessness, remained a passive conspirator—it remained the gravitational force that held me together through all my pride's many lapses. I did not care what society would say of me if it knew what perversions of nature I fiddled with in my hidden labs, so long as the work I did brought me the results I desired.

And it did. Though so much of experimentation is failure, it only makes those few and far between successes that much more triumphant. I caught glimpses of the likes of the old gods out of the eye's periphery, and felt the eternal ire of the fallen angels banished from the Presence as they brushed by me. The elements of nature tilted to my whim, faithfully obedient to a master who held the capacity not merely to understand but to exploit their rudimentary working. I created life where there was none, albeit from materials that were ultimately limited by their earthy nature. I even committed that most unspeakable of sins and consumed human flesh—one of the few taboos even now I cannot wholly overcome, though that is not to downplay the very real effects understood even by our most ancient ancestors of the transfer of power that comes with the deed.

The worshipers of a voodoo _umbanda_ may become delirious with the ecstasies inflicted on them by the spirits beyond this plane, whether they be dead or beyond concepts of life and death; but I remained the observer and facilitator, a grounding conduit through which such energies moved and amplified without moving me. I laughed in the faces of demons, humbling them, for what could they do to corrupt me that I had not already done to myself? The creatures of the cold ether cowered at my feet like sniveling dogs, craving my madness that might set them loose while at the same time distrusting its scientific coldness that made me such an abomination among men, and therefore unpredictable. My soul could not be so easily bought or sold. No more completely did I feel like a god or an angel than when I could feel those dark energies scrutinizing my mind like animals sniffing beneath a door, craving with salivating jaws what was inside all the more because they could not get in.

It was at times like those that I realized my singularity, and appreciated it. Doubtless there were many in the world of like mind, who never realized their gifts because of the same skepticism that had been cultured inside me from early on; but even then, I was sure that if such persons did exist they would not be as strong of will as I. It was a rare person, I came to understand, who could stand in the world of the demons with his humanity intact.

I at least knew what had caused this sensitivity in me—that is, I thought I did—and it did not come entirely from myself; or else, Saki and I were two of a kind, sharing the same stagnant, monstrous blood, tugged toward the birthplaces of our sins by whatever force desired us back. In any case, I should have been content and stopped my quest there, when I was still able. Maybe then I would not have discovered that terrible secret of grandfather's. Although, then again, the discovery may have been inevitable.

For the meantime, it was for Saki's sake that I absorbed as much of this unholy information as my brain would hold. And when at last I was prepared to see his face once again I contacted Sakaki, my family's old butler. I had recently acquired a home in the Tokyo suburbs and wished to hire him as its caretaker while I was away on business. Loyal to the end, even after all our years of separation, he agreed as though he had had nothing else to do all those years but await my call. Of course, I do oversimplify our relationship: for in many ways, as I said before, he felt like a kind of father to me; and I wonder if I, too, was like a son to him.

He only expressed reluctance when I asked him about the place where we had buried Saki's body. I do not exaggerate when I say it was the first time either of us mentioned his name in a decade. Even if I had sung the praises of the Devil in front of him, that God-fearing man would not have reacted as he did. Saki's name had become a blasphemous word that to speak might give his spirit untold powers. Sakaki's reaction was only temporary, however, and when his reason returned to him he pointed me toward that marshy park, still as dank and gloomy as it had seemed to us that fateful night, as though permanently hung over with an ominous miasma. He warned me not to go, and do the things he knew I would do though he could not mention them. At the same time, however, he knew he could not stop me. Mine was a wound that had festered too long, a desire too long unsatisfied; and even though he dreaded what might become of it, he would not deny me the revenge he too must have felt in some decrepit and un-Christian part of his own person I only deserved.

I did not take him back to the scene of our crime. Alone in the dark, I returned to the location myself and exhumed my half-brother's body, wrapped in its sheet like some grotesque caterpillar, awaiting its resurrection, its transformation. I was not afraid. By now, I had convinced myself, I was stronger than Saki had ever been. And I knew what to expect.

At least, I thought I did. I was not prepared when I parted the sheet before his face to find his body in quite the pristine condition that it was. His beautiful face which I had resented so much was the same calm death mask it had been when he had collapsed onto me in the parlor of my parents' house. His skin had bloated somewhat with the ground's moisture and turned a sickly pale, but there was very little evidence of decay, and the clothes he wore were the only part of him that could really be said to be the worse for wear. Perhaps something in the marshy soil, or the sap of a nearby tree, had naturally preserved his tissues, but I was hard-pressed to believe I would be blessed with such an incredible coincidence. It was as though the scavengers had simply refused to touch him, that even to the worms and flies he had an evil about his physical presence that remained just as strong after the body had died.

I was overcome with a revulsion I do not think I would have experienced had I found him in the decayed condition I had expected. To see his seventeen-year-old body, still clad in his black school uniform, almost exactly as it had been the last time I saw him brought the abject hate, the hopelessness, the lust—every tumultuous emotion I harbored on the day of my parents' funeral and everything since rushing back into my person, flooding my core. So wholly did I want to destroy him right there that it took all my self-restraint not to rend his corpse to pieces, like Set did his Osiris, and throw them back into the swamp. Only by reminding myself of my greater mission was I able to stay my shaking hands.

So long as he slept on in that unduly peaceful death, I could not make him feel the stab of each particular, nuanced agony he had inflicted on me. It was with an eagerness to exact my revenge to perfection that I loaded his body into the trunk of my car and took him home one last time, where the facilities awaited to transport him to Kyoto and, with any luck, back into this insufferable world of the living.

—

Even now it is with some difficulty that I recall what I attempted then, and the knowledge that resulted from it. As I examine the memories of that time, searching among them for clues that might help me to understand what went wrong, I am pummeled by a wave of revulsion that accompanies them: revulsion for my failures, for the cruel impartiality of fate, and for what I am. I look back on the arrogance of my twenties with anger for my younger self, having now been humbled by the events that transpired as a result of my hubris.

But do I regret it? If I do it is only in the fleeting envy for my boyhood, for the Kazutaka was more successful at deluding himself of a sense of normalcy than I can ever be again. But that Kazutaka is dead now. He died long ago. Sometimes I wonder if he ever truly existed at all.

For the meantime, however, with Saki at last under my control I drifted on a sense of invincibility, for it was my impending revenge which so consumed my every thought. For weeks his corpse lay concealed in the hidden Shion lab, stretched out on the steel gurney in his spiteful mockery of slumber—in a mockery of grandfather's patient—patiently awaiting my returns that were only as frequent as my schedule would allow, and not as frequent as I would have liked for what little progress I made. Yet though I was no longer the one in a position of vulnerability, I could not allow myself to wallow in that minuscule victory and risk losing sight of my final goals: great rigors still lay ahead of the both of us.

First I began the delicate process of repairing the fatal wound, removing the bullet from his tissues and mending the major arteries and veins, one by one. I was surprised to find his organs still moist and pliant, and sometimes I was almost convinced he was still alive, merely holding his breath and pretending to be dead in my presence. In all the time he had lived in my house I had never seen my half-brother's naked body, let alone lingered over it for such lengths of time, and only touched him if I could not avoid it. Never had I dreamed I might one day be dissecting him. It was unnerving, because there were times it was all too easy to forget he was that half-brother at all, and not another nameless cadaver; until, of course, I would look up and see his face, his seventeen-year-old features frozen in time, at the height of their youthful and deceptive beauty; and the scientist inside me that detested emotional irrationality would put down the instrument in my hand, startled by the ring of it hitting the steel tray that split the silence like a gunshot, and reluctantly step away from that lovely face until I had time to collect my thoughts, and steady my shaking hands.

Consumed by an eager impatience that was fueled by intellectual desires as much as by an all but biological need for vengeance, this process did not take long. Yet to come was that phase that would take its greatest toll on my mind and my health, as I became obsessed with breathing new life into his lifeless body. With new blood in his veins, many new hearts to choose from, and the electrochemical pulse that rules all our body's precise functions, I sought to invigorate those cells that remained—convinced I could undo the damage done to them through death. Not content with material science alone, whose limitations continuously failed me through one trial after another, I combined modern medicine with the secret occult formulas which I had brought back up into the light of day in an ungodly marriage, conducting such forbidden rituals in that hidden lab the likes of which I shall not repeat aloud or in print outside that place.

Yet, whether using defibrillators or invocations, transplants or elixirs, I was confounded at every turn, never able to achieve anything more than a fleeting, faint, and entirely artificial heartbeat, or the ghost of a brainwave so ambiguous it may have been nothing more than an electronic hiccup; until the mass of flesh that was left, though human in shape and constitution, was but an eroded vestige of the Saki whom I had brought up out of the marshy soil, crisscrossed by the paths of the scalpel, patched with wires and tubes, dissembled and reassembled countless times like a vintage automobile.

There came a point where, as things stood, I could go no further. I had exhausted my resources and my knowledge, and was abruptly faced with the peculiarly depressing reality that even the dark arts came with gross limitations. I sensed myself teetering on the verge of a breakdown. It is the worst place to be, in the agony of waiting for the inevitable ego's collapse to come and simultaneously fearing its advent. Above all I shuddered at the thought of destroying what remained of Saki and ruining any further chance to resurrect him. That had become my purpose, a matter of principle and pride that had gradually come to transcend those temporal things and almost singly define my existence. It was at that time when, lacking a sense of direction, I chanced to pick up a newspaper and see _his_ face once again.

It was in a photograph just inside the front page. And though I remember every detail of that photograph, I could tell you next to nothing about what it was supposed to represent. Something about another ubiquitous A-bomb memorial, if memory serves. All I know with any clarity is that seeing his face in it struck me dumb. One moment I was scanning the articles without actually comprehending the meaning of the words, my mind wandering to my recent failures as I waited in a cafe near the train station. The next I nearly forgot where I was and what I was doing there as my brain finally put the pieces together, and I realized why I had found the photograph so inexplicably disturbing.

In the background, behind the main subject of the photographer's camera but still excruciatingly in focus, was the image of grandfather's patient. In the flesh, unquestionably alive wrapped in a black trench coat of contemporary design despite the summer weather, and just as young as he had been when he died. More than sixty-five years before.

It was not possible. There was no scientific explanation for his presence there, in a photograph less than a week old. I told myself there must be some mistake, that it was merely a lookalike that my mind, which so wanted to see that distant man in the present, filled in over someone else's frame, fooling me into believing what I knew could not be. But it was no use. I could not un-convince myself of something I already knew like it was hardwired into my person. I had every minute detail of that man's visage firmly planted in my mind—I had studied his one photograph until I could faithfully duplicate his image behind my closed eyelids, in my dreams both sleeping and awake. There could be no mistake. The photograph, faithful if imperfect medium that it was, did not lie. Somehow its subject, _that man_, was alive.

As soon as I reached my destination I was on the telephone with the newspaper staff, asking for anyone who knew the identity of the man in the photograph. No one could give me an answer. He was simply a passerby who inadvertently wound up in print. They merely laughed awkwardly when I asked them if they knew that they had captured a dead man on film, and I could not help but laugh along with them at the absurdity of my own question.

I knew only one thing: that he had been spotted near the Oura Catholic Church in Nagasaki. My curiosity piqued, I wondered if he might have been captured in other photographs as accidentally as this one; but there was no way to search old newspapers based on an image, and we were at that time years away from computerized facial recognition technology.

So it seemed like fate again when, following the Nagasaki link, I stumbled upon his image once again—this time in a photograph of a makeshift hospital and morgue following the bombing of Nagasaki—in a publication dated 10 August 1945. This time he was in shirtsleeves, rolled up to his elbows, his dark hair falling out of its slicked-back style, his skin and clothes darkened with blood or soot—it was impossible to tell which from the fuzzy black and white photograph—gesturing hopelessly to the ravaged bodies that lay before his completely unharmed self. Like some allegory in a Romantic painting, standing apart from the scene, unseen and untouched by the tragedy around him, a Cassandra to whose pleas for humanity no one listened.

Once again, neither the article nor the caption revealed his name. It was as though no one had seen him until after the photographs were developed, like the shadow of a ghost caught on a tenuous piece of celluloid, and only then were they sufficiently touched by the tragic and compelling aura of his person to take him to print. However, once again, there was no mistaking his identity as the very same man my grandfather treated from 1918 to 1926, and the mysterious stranger passing through the background of the more recent picture.

Like a man possessed I became desperate to uncover his identity, and—if it were true by some miracle of nature or science or both that he still lived or something like it—to learn his whereabouts. Not a moment went by when I did not wonder, and was not tortured by the possibilities and the sheer absence of answers of any kind. In light of my recent discovery I could no longer be contented to read about his short life in grandfather's books, books I had already read a thousand times, or gaze at this incredibly miniscule collection of photographs that documented his existence. In fact, I had never been content with just that. Now, however, it was more than a mere obsession, a mere unsatisfied intellectual lust. I knew I would never be able to calm my restless soul until I saw him for myself, face to face.

To say he was a ghost may not have been far off the mark after all. I was led to return to a reference in an ancient text, about Heian in age or slightly older and considered occult even then, about the _shinigami_, the Shinto angels of death. The text spoke of them as spirits who came in a form that was material and at the same time not, to reap the souls of the living who had exhausted their alloted time on earth. Like the ashura and the hungry ghosts of countless noh dramas, they remained in a state of limbo to pay penance for the sins they committed in life, indentured in their own purgatory where they maintained the spiritual order of the world of men, handing down life and death, killing others as a method of atonement.

It was an old wives' tale, something told to children to make them behave. Do your chores or the shinigami will take you. Yet, unless he were truly immortal—and my grandfather's account of his demise thus fundamentally flawed—I could think of no other creature of legend that fit the patient's sightings throughout the twentieth century, and his ageless appearance. At the same time, I could not help but dwell on the possibility there may have been something inhuman about him to begin with, something told in that alien chromosome. Demons were said to be recognized by their crimson eyes—eyes which grandfather had been all too familiar with for eight years of his life. Did he ever know precisely what it was he had brought into his clinic?

But whether demon or human ghost, or some combination of both, it did not matter much to me. Either way he was not human, and that knowledge was enough to make me feel we were somehow connected by our tainted blood. In one way or another we had both left our humanity behind, whether by birth or choice, or an inevitable crossing of the two. He and I, and even Saki—we were thrust into a world we were never made to inhabit, our souls struggling to survive in a soil that could not nurture us, and naturally—desperately—we were drawn to the only things that were like us.

Each other.

Amidst my frantic searches for clues as to the patient's true identity came a natural reexamination of the body of grandfather's work that remained in my possession. I rifled through the files that were contemporary with that man's, then those that came after, hoping to find anything—any fragment of information that might prove relevant or useful, even if only in the slightest mention—convinced there must have been _something_ I missed before.

There was nothing. Nor in the wartime files neither. There was nothing more on this most important medical find in human history than a single portfolio, and the information contained in the various files and journals within. I refused to believe that was all there was to it, even though, alas, it is nigh impossible to argue from an absence. There had to be something more, some awesome truth that had never been allowed into our house. Had the passage of time destroyed that body of data? Or was it locked up in some secure government building, classified or buried along with all the other monstrosities of that savage era, a posthumous conspirator in a shameful smear on our nation's history that I would have no hope of bringing to light in my lifetime, even if only for my own, selfish purposes?

Or—the most likely possibility that I absolutely could not believe, for it was as though my life depended on its being false—had it simply never existed?

Sitting slouched on the floor, rubbing the sleep from my tired eyes and everywhere else it threatened to descend, surrounded by a healthy layer of scattered files and notes and old medical charts I had already perused countless times, the acrid smell of countless smoked cigarettes melding with the smell of the ancient paper, I could think of only one thing left, only one door still untried. It was a gamble: it had been more than sixty-five years since that man passed from this world. However, I had no other option. If even one of those who had known my grandfather in those years were left alive, if even one remembered that man or had ever heard mention of him in passing from my grandfather in his lifetime, I had to know.

Among grandfather's assets was a photograph dated 1939 in which he had posed with a few of his assistants. Unfortunately for myself, none of them were named directly. Furthermore, from that time I had only lists of nurses and other doctors, too many to narrow down with any ease without some sort of starting point, some sort of key to guide me. Grandfather had mentioned in his journal a few of those women who served as his nurses during the period of 1918-1926 by family name, but I had nothing to connect them to faces until a search of the old clinic's archives—what of them had been salvaged after the carpet bombing of '45—revealed another photograph, a group portrait of the clinic's staff in 1924, much less intimate than the later one and much less clear in resolution, but labeled with the names of its subjects. I found a match in one Nakagami Tomoko, a young nurse who had joined grandfather's staff in '23. She was eighteen at the time, and, as detailed in the journal, one of the handful of persons who had regular contact with the patient in the last few years of his life. Then I hit a dead end: I could find no records of her involvement with the clinic or grandfather after 1927.

I wasted too much time searching in vain for a Nakagami throughout the wartime records. Naturally, the answer had been right under my nose the entire time, and I failed to make the connection until by chance it hit me: something in the weird half-smile of the thirtysomething nurse standing next to grandfather in the photograph from '39 that reminded me of Nakagami's stiff, grainy image. It was no wonder I had not been able to find her: she ceased to be a Nakagami in 1927. It was one Uesugi Tomoko to whom I was made to turn my energies, and by some stroke of luck I found her still among the living—and suffering from Alzheimer's in a nursing home outside Osaka.

I was not the type to be daunted by such trifling challenges as that. The information I sought was half a century old or more; surely if anything remained clear in her damaged mind it was those memories buried deepest, ingrained in the inner folds of the brain by time as well as by the horrors inherent in them. I came armed with a smile, prepared to massage it out of her mind if that was what was necessary to obtain the information I needed, and with a background as a doctor that surely she would relate to; but, slouched in her chair in that demoralized fashion of the incarcerated elderly, she only stared through me until an orderly introduced me as "Doctor Muraki."

At the mention of that name her head snapped up and she focused her eyes, which came suddenly alive, on mine. Past the glare of fluorescents on my lenses and her own eyelids drooping with the weight of time, she peered deep into my eyes, examining me for something that remained locked in her memories.

Then, quite suddenly, she brought her head back as though recoiling from an offensive scent. "You're not Yukitaka," she said indignantly. I suspect she might have found some resemblance to my grandfather there in my features but not enough, as though she suspected I were a trick played on her by the home's staff she was determined not to fall for. I watched, however, as slowly the expression on her lined face devolved from one of careful scrutiny to a look of abject terror.

"_You!_" she exclaimed before I had time to properly introduce myself, and bolted up straight in her chair. Her face went white and she clutched the armrests, her limbs and fingers shaking so much it looked as though they might snap. The other residents and nurses glanced our way at the outburst, but I only continued to smile defensively as she railed on, "No . . . _no_, you get _away_ from me, you! What's the meaning of this? What are you doing here?! Don't want anything to do with you! Don't got nothing for you!"

"I just want to ask you abou—"

"_No!_ I got nothing to say to you—"

"About a man you once treated in my grandfather Yukitaka's clinic—"

I reached into my jacket to retrieve the photograph of the patient which I had brought with me, and that movement was enough to send her over the edge.

"Don't—_don't_ touch me!" she screamed, clutching her arms about her chest like a shield. "Leave me alone, leave me alone! Why did you come here? Why can't you just let me be? I told you I wanted nothing more to do with that _thing!_ Oh, Sensei, Sensei, what did you make us do?!"

She was unintelligible after that. I assume she was muttering more of the same as she twisted in the chair in a futile effort to distance herself from me. There arose the faint, ripe smell of urine as this went on. The nurses, shaken out of their initial shock and worried about her fragile condition, thought it best to remove Mrs Uesugi from my presence, and I could not blame them though my curiosity remained even more unsatisfied by her mysterious ejaculations. I was not sure why my presence had caused her such panic, or why she had referred to the patient as "that thing," but in my ignorance I thought I wanted to know. What exactly had happened to her in that clinic all those decades ago?

Whatever it was, the staff would not allow me to see her and put her through that trauma again, so I was shown the door. I was stopped on the way out of it, however, by a young nurse who asked if I was Dr Muraki. She introduced herself as Mrs Uesugi's great-granddaughter, and as soon as she said so I recognized a similarity between her homely features and those of Tomoko at eighteen, before she had acquired that cynical look of the early years of the war. She waved off my ensuing apology for my behavior graciously. "It's the war that's made her that way," she said by way of explanation. "She might not look it now, but she really was brilliant for a woman of her generation. Of course, the war affected everyone who lived through it, but sometimes I think it got to grandmama worse than others. Maybe it was because she worked for the government."

Though I had my own suspicions about what had caused Mrs Uesugi's outburst, she need not have said more than that. The medical atrocities perpetrated in the name of science and patriotism in that era were well documented; and, of course, I knew well first hand the kind of monsters that inhabited that stagnant darkness. I was one of them myself.

I felt strangely akin to this young woman if for no other reason than that here was another who seemed to have medicine in her blood; and I felt safe enough to confess to her the gist of the reason for my visit. As I gave voice to what had been strong arguments in my mind, I realized how far-fetched a dream I had up until then been chasing, and those arguments suddenly seemed ridiculously weak and tenuous to my own ears. Still, she nodded more vigorously with each new piece of information, until she interrupted me confidently: "Oh, yes. I know exactly what documents you mean."

"Is that right? Then, they still exist."

She nodded. "Mm, yeah. At least, I'm sure they date back to the time period you're talking about. I've never actually looked at them that closely myself; grandmama doesn't like discussing the things that happened then with any of us."

"And you're not the least bit curious as to what is in them?"

"I believe there are some secrets best left buried," she said, and there was a straightforwardness to her profession that left me unable to glean any ulterior meaning behind her words. "Besides, it isn't my place to pry. Maybe you can find some use for them. They originally belonged to _your_ grandfather, after all, and grandmama's never seemed to want anything to do with them. I have them in a box back at my apartment along with her other effects mom dumped on me." A single glimmer of resentment showed through her casual words, and in an instant had vanished again. "So? You want it?"

Did I ever. I started to reach into my jacket for a business card. "I'll pay the cost if you're willing to have the box mailed to me."

She flashed me a conspiratorial smile. She really had no idea what she was about to do. "I'll do you one better."

We arranged to meet at a cafe that afternoon after her shift—an ambiguous place where personal transactions happened every day and no one batted an eye. No one even bothered to suspect that top secret medical files of incalculable value could be passed so unwittingly into the hands of the one who was never supposed to see them. They arrived in an ubiquitous printer paper box tucked awkwardly under her arm—not sealed beneath lock and key, but concealing their identity in plain sight with a deceptive openness. So open, in fact, that the curiosity that had possessed me was momentarily confused, and refused to get worked up over what contents lay beneath the ordinary exterior.

It was not difficult to abstain from glancing at those contents on my return trip to Kyoto. All through the ride the box sat on the seat beside me, a passenger with weight equal to my own, a Pandora's box taunting me with promises of what awaited he with the misfortune to look inside. Answers to the questions I had sought regarding the mysterious patient, I hoped, his role in the war that culminated two decades after he took his final breaths, and where he fit into my chapter of the saga. And I who had waited so long to plunder that data could hardly bear to lift the lid and glance merely at the edges of the files and the documents inside. The train left me too exposed; but I felt equally shy returning with the documents alone to the hidden lab in Shion, with only Saki's ghost to keep me company, and laugh over my shoulder. Instead, I settled down with the box at a table in the university library, among whose anonymous stacks I had found shelter from the press of the extremes of the crowd and loneliness in the past.

I removed the lid and set it on the table beside the box, took up a handful of files, and placed them in front of me. One by one I opened them to the first page of their contents, checked the dates and scanned them for any mention of the mysterious patient. I flew through the early years of the war, with its optimistic references to an Asian empire with Japan at its head, and to cloning and the perfect race; into the early '40s and Nazi communiques, a tone of reluctance even then not based so much in morality as scientific thought bleeding through the reports on prisoner vivisections and experimental vaccinations and nerve gases that hid behind a cloak of empirical objectivity; and finally into the last throws of the war effort, when grandfather's hand became as tired as the country, and he plotted to abandon the ship that was the wartime government before it sank and took him with it. There was nothing for me in this era except the insight it provided into the darkness in grandfather's soul—a darkness I had never suspected as a child was there—a darkness that was at once the cause and effect of that savage time. But no mention of the patient.

Having come up empty, the sleeplessness of my nights of late abruptly caught up to me in a fatigue I felt throughout my entire person. I removed my glasses to rub my tired eyes; then replaced them and cleared my throat, readying myself for the tedious task of browsing through the postwar files that awaited me. I took out another stack, this one thicker and less organized, and opened the topmost file.

I had to look twice at the date that assaulted me. 1961. A full sixteen years after the file that preceded it. I tried to ignore the discrepancy. Perhaps these later files had been arranged or replaced out of chronological order, I thought; at least that would fit the haphazard way in which their contents seemed to have been put together. Certain I must have jumped forward in time too soon, I flipped through the pages of notes and data that were tucked into the file, worn not by age like the others but by the thousands of times they had been handled.

As my eyes restlessly scanned the pages, a peculiar feeling as though I were trespassing worked its way into my brain and would not let me go. It was a feeling akin to that blasphemous one I had experienced on many occasions of late, but at the same time separate. Perhaps I could best equate it to that feeling I described before that I had upon first seeing Saki: that feeling of looking in a mirror. Of looking back in time, back inside myself, to some origin nature in her wisdom prevents us from revisiting, lest the memory of that point cancel out our entire existence. Like how it is said that we never truly allow ourselves to dream our deaths for fear we will undo our lives. Isn't it more appropriate to say that we never dream of our conceptions?

Words and phrases that threatened to awaken that paradox leaped out at me from the paper—words and phrases that contained nothing sinister inherently, considering the whole of grandfather's career, but which shocked me like a plunge into an icy river in some inexplicable way. Foreign material shows reluctance to duplicate . . . abnormalities in previous embryos . . . fundamental incapacity to develop . . . refused inception . . . severe mental and emotional distress . . . multiple miscarriages . . .

Against the better judgment of my subconscious, I removed the sheet of paper sticking conspicuously out of the pile on which the latter was scrawled and read it in depth. The header bore the name of Mrs Uesugi; but I recognized the voice of the writer without any explicit indication.

_-_

_. . . My idiot son has seen it fit to inform me of his affair with that psychiatric patient of his. He tells me the woman is pregnant and has the temerity to hope for a son to whom he can pass on the family name. While I cannot forgive him this lack of faith, nor can I help but sympathize with his anxiety. Until now the project's results have not given us much hope for success. We cannot ignore the biological instinct that produces in us that strong desire to create offspring who will carry on our legacies, even to the point of manufacturing feelings of lust where there would otherwise be none. However, this child if carried to term will create complications for our plans that must be tackled with the utmost care. I do not want a bastard child smearing the Muraki name, no matter how brilliant it turns out to be._

_I fear that if this latest specimen had not been accepted by the host's body we might never have learned of the deception. As it is, we have reason to believe that this one will develop into a healthy fetus—so long as the mother does nothing to abort it. Despite my son's reassurances to the contrary, I fear what she may try to do to it or to herself. She has already accrued severe mental and emotional distress due to multiple miscarriages that has affected the physiological wiring of her brain, and shown a deep aversion to the project at every stage of its development. She speaks of the child growing inside her as a 'thing' and an abomination with a practically religious conviction. Not for the first time I find myself questioning my son's judgment in marrying this woman; but on the other hand, her mental degradation has worked to ostracize her willingly from the outside world, and as long as she remains medicated she can be cowed into the necessary examinations with little trouble. . . ._

-

I was forced to raise my eyes from the paper. A wave of nausea hit me when I attempted to comprehend the reality of what grandfather described, and a vague memory of some primal moment buried deep in my unconscious drifted just out of grasp. A memory of unnatural medical experiments of the kind that occupied childhood nightmares. And a disbelief that those actors accounted for in the letter, the son and the host, descending into madness, could actually by my parents.

It could not be true. The document had to be a fabrication; that was all I could think—all I would allow myself to think. Or else it was another couple grandfather wrote of. If it were true, then that would mean I was . . .

I flipped through letter after letter, each creased piece of paper seeming to mock me as it passed beneath my frantic gaze. Until I reached the final one—the one which had only three simple lines written on its header-less surface: "At this time I am unable to complete the project as planned. I am entrusting the data obtained thus far to you as I fear the files are no longer safe here. Forgive the intrusion, but Kazutaka must never see them."

I ripped the sheet of paper out from the rest and stared at it in disbelief. My hands trembled as they held the paper, making it rattle, and slowly a feeling of such utter betrayal grew within me that I wanted to rip the note into minuscule pieces, and send whatever proof remained of grandfather's "project" along with it into oblivion. But the scientist in me would not allow it.

I set the letter aside and rifled through the charts that sat unassumingly below it, throwing open file after file, searching desperately for . . . what? Proof that the data I found there would not corroborate the letters? But I already knew what I would find. As strongly as the humanity in my self resisted delving any further into that abyss of data, I was pulled along by an overwhelming curiosity—no, a _necessity_ to know the truth of my existence, whatever that may be. Pulled along by a patricidal urge to defy that last wish of grandfather's, to destroy the secret he had spent so long carefully building and concealing. Did he really think he could hide the truth from me? Did he think he could defy evolution herself, unwind the delicate machine that is the natural order of the human biology with impunity?

The charts of countless unnamed zygotes and embryos met my eyes, detailing the unnatural paths their cells had taken in their futile efforts to develop into something resembling a human being in the calm, objective scrawl of a government scientist, and in grotesque photographs callously marked down as the results of one failed experiment after another: miscarried abominations, rejected embryos with their strange variations of stem cells that multiplied like a cancer, partially absorbed tumor-fetuses. My countless unborn brethren.

Then I stopped. My name was printed on the tab of a folder, in that old typewriter type that suddenly aroused in me such a fear I had never known the likes of before, that made me pause before carefully turning over the cover and studying its contents.

But I turned it over nonetheless. Any hope I may have had that I had misconstrued grandfather's letters to his nurse were dashed as the data transcribed there confirmed what I dreaded all along was true. Until then it had been a nebulous, nameless thing to me, the truth I knew all along somewhere in the back of my mind—a figure I had seen moving through the fog, or something glimpsed behind the rising cigarette smoke, vanishing just when I thought it had finally begun to take shape. For the first time that figure came to me in the starkest clarity, and I regret that it is only in hindsight I can say I wish I had never seen it. I wish I had never gone looking.

That figure, that "thing" spoken of with such revulsion by Mrs Uesugi was not the mysterious patient after all. At least, not entirely. It was that same "thing" grandfather wrote of as growing within my mother's womb, conceived in a laboratory and implanted there against her will. That thing and Kazutaka were one in the same. That monster was myself. A golem formed in the guise of a human child—a human child with forty-seven chromosomes.

Oh, Yukitaka . . . _what did you do?_ It was no grandson you created. It never was, was it? Did you think I would never find out? That I would not go in pursuit of that most fundamental right that I possess as a living organism—the right to know the nature of my own existence? What arrogance, what hubris runs throughout this family of ours—this tree rotted from the inside out, rotted at its roots.

I must have blacked out. I have no recollection of what I did during that time, or how I conducted myself. All I remember is waking to consciousness in that cold lab, clinging to Saki—to his poor, cold, naked, carved-up body—clinging like a little boy. Startled to the present by the sounds of my own sobs.

Saki, Saki . . . I did not listen. I had not wanted to hear what you had to say, knowing deep within my heart that it was true, all true. . . . But he was only half right when he said we were different from everyone else, that we were unique. I wonder if he knew how deep that rabbit hole went. Could it be, that all this time he was only the tamer, and I the tiger, pacing in my lonely cage, that he had prodded and teased until something finally broke. Snapped. This was my purpose from the beginning, from my inception. Wasn't it? The purpose my career had been leading me toward all along: to kill. To destroy. It was fixed in my biology, in my chemistry, in thatmost base material I received from grandfather's patient, overriding whatever humanity I might have otherwise been born with—had I been born a human child. And yet you still claimed to love me. . . . Is _this_ what you were trying to tell me, Saki?

I opened my eyes to look at him and found my vision blurred. Not by tears alone, but by something else as well, something concentrated on my right side. Blood. My own blood. I only knew that because it was smeared on Saki's shoulder where I had rested my cheek, and crusted on my tie and the front of my shirt. I raised my fingers to my eye, touching the skin around it gingerly, and only then did I feel the stinging pain. Yet, horrified by the discovery, I could not help but continue to probe. So this was what that man had done to himself, was it? I asked myself, strangely fascinated. When he could no longer stand the thought of what he was? And now I had gone and done it to myself as well? But when and how, I did not remember.

My breath hitched in my chest, and the sound that was expelled was neither a sob nor a laugh, but some tortured union of the two. It ached coming out, as it tore itself from my larynx, and it ached just as much to hear. Gradually my silent cries evolved involuntarily into a chuckle that wracked my body, which tried to hold it in as I pressed my mouth against Saki's cold, bloodstained skin, and shook us both upon the steel table.

I opened my mouth and laughed aloud. There was no reason for me to; I was miserable. Yet something struck me as humorous in the irony of my predicament. To think I had spent my entire life until this point denying what I was, while all along I was actively searching for that very same truth, deluding myself that as long as I saw it embodied in someone else I was safe. Had I known what a monster I would find, would I have continued to look? Yes, I have no doubt I would have, never had I been satisfied with incomplete answers. My howls of laughter reached my ears hollowly as they echoed off the high ceiling and the cold surfaces of the clinical steel and glass and concrete all around us. It was not my own voice that returned to me from across that darkness. It was demonic, and I would have cringed to hear it if it did not bring with it the justification I sought. Yes, Saki was right. I was that _thing_ all along.

Saki was right. . . .

Suddenly I could bear the thought no more. No more could I stand the cold mockery of peace that he assumed next to me. Despising him that, envying him that, I leaped up from my position at his side and onto my knees, straddling his body. The table rocked beneath me with the violence of my actions, threatening to dump the both of us onto the floor; and that rocking, like a ship at sea, reminded me of my bed in my parents' home—that bed that we had shared once, against my will. I grabbed his face in my hand, cradling his chin between my thumb and forefinger, forcing his head back, the tips of my fingers digging into his jaw, leaving white depressions where they pressed into the dead flesh, yearning to crush the bone beneath. Is this what he would have done to me had I let him? The way he had clenched his jaw beneath his smile when he was near me, holding back with all his effort the urge to hurt me, to molest me . . . Was this what you wanted, Saki? What you dreamed, in my dreams, of doing to me? My own jaw ached, and I grinned a bitter grin to think of how completely the tables had been turned. I, however, was not as strong as he had been then. My ego, run ragged keeping all my evil intentions in check, was tired, and I no longer had the will power to stop myself from doing what that monster inside me told me was only within my rights. My grin was lost in a snarl. Harder now I pushed Saki's head back, begging him to give me some reason to stop as I searched his lifeless features, trying to wipe their loveliness out with my shaking hand; but when those features warped beneath my palm, it was only temporary; and he would give me nothing. _Nothing._ This, he seemed to say, this ordeal was only the beginning of what I had coming.

If that were true, then neither did he deserve what I had given him. Where was his gratitude for this heart I had stolen for him—for any of the dozens of hearts? The sutures crisscrossing his body that were proof of my countless hours of sacrifice, proof of that unholy love he had tried to convince me of so many years ago—of a hate so strong that it would stick with me no matter where I ran to escape it—what use did he have for them?

I began to tear away the tubes and electrodes that formed their convoluted network over his limbs, working without reservation to destroy what I had spent so much to build. I would prove his point, if he so wanted me to. If this was what I was, this was my purpose, to rend creation at its seams, then I would fulfill that sadistic design. The wires snapped under the desperate force of my pulling, the tubes hissing and gurgling, spilling the fluids contained in them without cessation over Saki and the floor, not knowing enough to stop. Burns marred his skin in their places, and ragged holes left by the penetration of countless needles and strings of wire, and still I was not satisfied. The incision running the length of his torso that would never heal despite my best efforts remained a raised ridge like that which ran straight down the Atlantic floor, crisscrossed by stitches, black against his pale skin. I dug the tips of my fingers into that ridge and pulled, and the sutures popped apart as cleanly as the stitches of a kimono seam. Into that opening I slid my hands, deep into his chest cavity. There was nothing clinical, nothing objective to this act of defilement. If Saki did not want the heart I had placed here, I said to myself, then I would take it back. My grasping hands found what they were looking for, and wrapping my fingers around it, I yanked my prize out of its little hollow, feeling the veins and arteries that had been connected snap back at separation. Blood so dark it was almost black and thick as molasses pooled in the chest cavity. Of the heart itself there was nothing left of value. In his dead body that would not accept it, even as his own organs remained pink and slick, it had turned from the healthy red and violet of the beating heart I had implanted to the putrid color of rotting meat.

As I held it up in my hand, examining it from different angles, Saki's corpse continued to lie between my legs indifferently, callously unaware of how deep this revelation of my failure wounded me. Nothing I did could reanimate him—nothing I did could return him to this reality so that he might taste the hell he brought me to. Damned be the tools of my trade: as though I needed further proof I was far better at ending life than I could ever be at protecting it.

Well, then. If that was how it would be, I would embrace my fate wholeheartedly. I ground the rotted heart against the meeting of his clavicles and sternum, and it turned to pulp beneath the palm of my hand, staining the pale column of his throat with black, clotted blood. Turning to the opening I had made again, I grabbed a fistful of what came first to my hungry fingers, twisting in Saki's gut, wrenching out the cold viscera that twisted and writhed like live cables with each frenzied handful, so desperate was I to destroy any evidence of my progress with Saki. Each time his violated body was tugged up toward me it shuddered like a marionette on a string—in a jerky arc that could not be separated in my mind from the arching back of an orgasming woman. Sometime during it, his eyes fell open. The lids were jolted open just a slight amount by the violence of my actions, yet it was enough for the eyes beneath to appear to be angled straight at me.

I halted at that sight, and found myself out of breath. The grunts and frenzied, stifled growls that I only now recognized as my own in the silence dissipated. I could not see my hands for the blood and gore that covered them, changing them into slick black shapes that suddenly felt alien to me, like leeches crawling up to beneath the sleeve cuffs of my white shirt, which had long since turned red. I felt strangely aroused, and glanced down at myself to see an erection straining the front of my trousers, hovering just centimeters above his own flaccid sex. That point and the fabric that surrounded it was all I could see of my person that remained stark white, tainted by only the finest spatter of blood. Nothing else was untouched.

A sudden shame for what I had done gripped me, and I felt in vain like I would vomit. Perhaps it is fairer to say that the shame was for what I felt doing what I did, for there was no remorse for my actions to be found within me, only a queer pleasure fueled by the body's own natural drugs, and stoked by the conviction that echoed throughout my cells: this was what they had made me to do. I was only fulfilling my purpose. And I received no contradiction from Saki's clouded, lifeless eyes.

With far more care than I had got on, I slowly climbed off his body and the table, not knowing the extent of my own distress until I attempted to stand and found my legs numb. Steadying myself against the table, I turned to examine the mess I had made of Saki. My rational mind slowly found its place at the fore of my consciousness again, and only then did a seed of regret and hopelessness begin to wedge itself into my satisfaction—a seed that was only nurtured by the omniscient opacity of Saki's eyes, telling me I must have known this would happen when I forfeited control of my senses. Despite how justified I felt, how satiated—despite everything I now knew about myself, I could not let him go. Just as I could not let the dream of grandfather's patient go.

As I stood there half bent over across the table, resting my head in my bloodied hand, a new plan unfolded itself with scientific persistence in my brain. I leaped up, the doctor once again, and went about arranging the tools of my operation. The pain in my right eye was still there, now a dull throbbing, the blood hardening to a sticky glue that impeded my vision, but it was nothing next to the restlessness within me that would not be satiated until I had corrected the results of this clumsy fit of passion. I could deal with my own injuries later.

I rolled Saki's body over onto its front, paying no heed to the resettling of anything that still remained in his opened abdomen. The ridge of his spinal column was studded with rows of tiny dark holes that marked the points of entry for the various electrodes that threaded through his vertebrae just below the skin, and into the nerves bundled there. I traced those tiny, puckered holes fondly as the details of a plan solidified in my mind, leaving my prints behind in the red ink of his own blood as I did so. My previous attempts had not failed completely, I told myself; rather, my methodology was off. I said before that the cells of the brain and the connections formed between them were the key to immortality. Everything until now had proven a waste of time and resources, and I was finally correcting that guilty pleasure.

With the familiar weight of the scalpel to calm my shaken nerves, I made an incision along his spine, from the first cervical vertebra at the base of his skull to the coccyx, and peeled back the folds of skin, following the paths of the wires beneath it to where they disappeared in the gaps between the bones. This, in contrast to the mess I had made of his front, was a clean operation. I separated the ribs and pelvic bones from the spinal column, then worked on removing the head. Tilting it back by the hair, like one might the head of a sacrificial animal, I slit his throat on that makeshift altar, making sure to keep the larynx intact: though I knew not yet how I would accomplish it, when I did finally succeed in bringing him back, I wanted to hear his screams in the old voice with which I was familiar.

When that was finished I lit a cigarette, and collapsed with it onto the floor, leaning my aching shoulders against a cabinet. With shaking fingers I pulled the cigarette from my lips to exhale, and soon even that was tainted by the ubiquitous bloody marks that lay about everything. What I was going to do now with the remainder of Saki, and what to do about my eye, I did not yet know; but the latter at least seemed to be all but resolving itself. Already I was embracing the disfigurement in my mind—perhaps because it signified a bond between grandfather's patient and myself that had grown exponentially stronger in just this one night.

Suddenly I thought of my mother, and a feeling akin to pity settled itself deep in my gut, a pity that felt too alien to be my own but was there nonetheless. In light of the letters collected among grandfather's charts, her descent into madness had a much more rational explanation behind it than I could have ever imagined. Perhaps I could not fault her for becoming the mother she had been, distant, refusing to recognize me, taking comfort in the uncomplicated presence of inanimate objects. What great crime could anyone commit for that fate to be her reward for entering the Muraki household? To be forced to carry one botched fetus after another?

I could not begin to imagine it. And it was that inability that prevented me from changing the mindset I had carried with me about my mother since I was a child. The poor woman, I thought without any feeling at all behind the words, my heart in that instant becoming as cold as the voice of my grandfather—who could not even refer to her in his private transcriptions as his daughter-in-law, but rather as a host for his creations. A poor woman—but what else could I do? It was not as though I had asked to be born.

The printer paper box with its old, mismatched files beckoned once again; and I shifted myself over to where it lay on its side, contents spilling out, from a blow I must have delivered it in my earlier fit of madness of which I had no recollection. I went to right it, with a touch that felt almost apologetic. A file lying half in and half out tumbled over the edge, its contents spreading out in a fan across the floor; and I bent to retrieve them, just as I heard the rattle inside the box.

I knew intuitively what it was, as though the sound had painted a familiar picture in my mind, replicating the exact shapes of thin, rectangular microscope slides and small glass vials. I withdrew them carefully, reverentially, for I did not have to read beyond the dates on the faded labels written in my grandfather's hand to know to whom the samples of skin tissue and drops of blood contained therein belonged. They were to me like the holy relics of martyrs and saints, proof of existence of such concreteness to which not even a photograph can pretend—photographs which are only those proverbial shadow images projected on the cave wall next to the inarguable being of DNA.

It was the key to that man's existence, resting in fragile glass within the creases of the palm of my hand. And now, I knew, a fragment of myself as well.

—

Four months passed since that night of the lunar eclipse when I received a letter from the father of the Kurosaki boy informing me his son had slipped into a coma while in the care of the mental health facility. To tell the truth, I was surprised it had taken so long. For all intents and purposes, I had killed the boy that night in the cherry grove. There should have been no coherent soul left in that shell of a body. The fact that he fought for nearly four months was truly amazing. When I met the boy, the sense I had of him was that he felt there was little in his life for which to continue to live. I had thought he would gladly embrace the dark that was the only solace from the excruciating pain I had planted within him. But I was wrong. I wondered too if he were not unlike myself in that way, dreaming of death but terrified of actually seeing it for himself—terrified of the guilt for some past sins not of his own invention that might be waiting there to confront him. Sins of fathers, of siblings who should never have been born.

Then again, perhaps he was merely determined not to give up the fight, and give me the satisfaction of being the one to end his life. Perhaps the similarities I perceived between our respective conditions were nothing but products of my imagination.

When the summer rains came, I went to visit him. Then again when the cherry trees were in bloom, marking a year since our fateful meeting. Kurosaki Hisoka, I asked for. A name that suggests a secret, like childish whispers under the shade of trees. Like a flaw in the otherwise perfect diamond of an ancient family, something that must be protected but kept out of sight. There were motives here that were kept secret under lock and key—from me, and from the faculty that tended to him. Why his very traditional father bestowed him with a girl's name, for example; but that was but one of the more trivial of those mysteries.

Not that it mattered to me. I had secrets of my own regarding the boy: I alone knew what ailed him. But he was never Hisoka or Kurosaki to me. Even now years after his death that name sounds foreign to my ears. To me that child would always be Boy—a living Atsumori made up of myself and Saki, metamorphosed one atop the other with the heat of our karmic animosity like the layers of a fire opal. The scars of a curse under his skin are testament to that. Even then, with his mind lost in the darkness, his body responded faithfully to my tentative caresses in the private room, brightening with the forgotten characters; and at those moments, I knew he recognized my presence, saw it in his face. I coveted him for that. He was my most precious experiment—at least until then. What I would do to Saki should I ever come face to face with him again in this lifetime.

I wonder how he would take it, he who was so used to causing others torment. . . . How did it feel, boy, in that cold, dark place where you were—in that internal incinerator from which there was no escape into oblivion? To endure nothing but the unceasing pain and discomfort I made for you for three years—three years that must have seemed an eternity to you—to see no end in sight . . . was it magnificent? Was it hell?

But as I gazed upon the boy then I could not help but be struck by his imperfection. The notion would invade my thoughts like a tiny spur, gradually festering until I resented its intrusion. Though his body continued to function and grow on the minimal amount of nourishment fed it intravenously for three years, he was not grandfather's patient. He was not like us. He was human. He would die if the IV were removed, despite my efforts to the opposite effect. I began to doubt he would even see his seventeenth birthday. As it turned out, he barely made it to his sixteenth.

There were long stretches of time during those three years when I hardly thought of the boy. I threw myself into treating patients and saving lives, and losing some; watching Tsubaki grow into a fine young woman, uneasily walking the tightrope that kept the purity of her youth from plunging into the perversity of her sex as she tried to cope with her feelings toward me. Three years went by and I murdered no one—unless one counted the hapless passengers of the _Queen Camellia_, even then not far removed from pigs cut up in labs for the greater benefit of mankind for all the world cared about their disappearances. Then one day in the height of autumn in 1996 I was struck with an urge to visit the boy that I could not ignore.

Even then, in the cells of my body, I felt the urgent press of time. By the time I arrived it was already too late. The boy was gone. The doctor attending him at the family's behest informed me. He had simply slipped away in the dead of night. When his dropping heart rate triggered the alarm, he and the nurses rushed to save the boy, and then to revive him, but all to no avail. The boy had lost the will to live, the doctor told me, cringing at his own triteness; or rather, he had willed to live no more.

I had only the boy's vacated bed to which to turn my gaze now; already the body had been removed. How the living hurry to bury the dead—the dead who have gained all of eternity. Perhaps it was a fortunate thing for me, who might have disgraced myself had I seen his form resting in that peaceful repose rather than twisting in that agony meant for the likes of him, who are too beautiful to exist in the normal world. That cunning boy, that subtle creature, somehow he had thwarted all my troubles and all the plans I had devised for him, denying me _all of it_. How simply it all crumbled into failure in his hand—or his will, or whatever method he had used to free his material self from me, from the chains of immortality, and do what grandfather's patient had repeatedly failed to do. All over again I despised him—that ungrateful, devious boy—that weak sixteen-year-old child who in a single burst of determination destroyed everything I had built him up to be.

I managed to smile for the doctor, but my teeth hurt from the tight clenching of my jaw behind it. It seemed forever before I was able to walk out of the institution. It was not that I was unused to failure. As I said before, it is all par for the course in my profession. This failure, however, cut too close to the bone to be merely brushed off. It was the failure of having something so priceless, something so necessary within my grasp, only to see it disintigrate between my fingers, because I had been careless with one, seemingly insignificant factor. I never thought anyone could resist me.

I was not sure I would ever forgive the boy.

—

That revelation came later, when I happened to spy him in the crowd of a concert in Nagasaki, standing next to _that man_. Indeed, when I heard of his death I never expected to see the boy again. The curious mixture of sadness and resentment that had come over me, a sort of postpartum depression for the loss of what was at once a creation and a projection of my inner anguish, had acclimated me to a sense of finality on the matter of his self. Never had I thought it would be only the beginning, the birth of another great evil. Certainly I had never expected I might actually meet grandfather's patient in the flesh, either, though it remained among my heart's greatest desires to do so. But that is just as certainly what happened.

Things have a way of working themselves out, don't they?

The Kurosaki boy had not been dead long when I received a telephone call from a woman with a Chinese accent and on the brink of hysterics, proposing to me the craziest notion: bringing Maria Wong back from the dead. Though I did not keep up on popular music, I recognized the name of the internationally renowned young singer, touted as the next Teresa Teng and set to perform in Japan, and knew I would have remembered if the news had reported the loss of such a visible figure. Of course, there was a good reason for that: Maria had been discovered in her room just hours before by her stepmother-cum-manager (the woman on the phone), dead of exsanguination from her slit wrists.

As the woman spoke, I thought of my mother, and the desperation of her final hours. It made me reluctant to believe the stepmother's testimony, until I realized from her selfish pleas how much more she stood to lose from this development than gain. What she wanted was not her daughter back—as Kakyouin had at least had the humanity to want—but her meal ticket. At first, still affected by my failure with the boy, and not desiring to add past injury to insult, I tried to pass her on to Satomi, and let him deal with the fallout; but to my surprise she told me (with great indignation) that he had already rejected her request on the grounds it was impossible . . . and recommended my services instead.

I sat up when she said that; and at my lengthy silence, I could hear her smile on the other end as she asked if I were still listening. I asked her in turn where we could meet.

Maria's stepmother was an impetuous woman, just the type I despised; but I indulged her for selfish reasons. A vague plan of action was already beginning to take shape in my mind which coalesced into a clear purpose by the time of my arrival, even if it had almost no chance of coming to fruition. To torment her as much as anything, I made her a conspirator in the crime. She let me in at dead of night to see Maria's body, made-up and dressed in white lace and ruffles, like a young woman going to her wedding or first communion rather than her funeral. Like a porcelain doll, existing only for the twisted purposes of those around her. The stepmother bit back her misgivings as I lit candles and drew lines from forbidden magical rites around Maria's body in the open casket. I became a performer of sorts myself, gussying up the rituals with more melodrama than was necessary to make them work, all in order to appeal to her superstitions. I told her that if she ever spoke of what happened there, terrible consequences would befall her. She believed every word, the lies along with the truths, watching white-faced as I lay the sinister words and forms upon her stepdaughter that would return her to a cursed life. Even then her eyes glowed in the candlelight with a miserly hatred for the innocent girl; until, at last, in horror, she covered her mouth and fell to her knees in disbelief as Maria stirred and moaned in the casket, as though simply waking from a deep sleep.

Until that point I had seen so many souls to death, whether at my own hand or in spite of it, but never had I brought one back from it. My success came as some shock to me as well, and, in light of my recent failures, not an unpleasant one. However, this reanimated Maria Wong could be an ordinary girl no longer, nor I had ever intended to make her one. It is no small feat to draw a soul once separated back into its material body, and I did not have the time nor patience, nor perhaps even the skill to create a Lazarus of this girl whom I had never met. She would instead remain a zombie, forced to devour the flesh and blood of living human donors to maintain her tenuous semblance of life. Though her stepmother may abuse her and run her ragged during the day, at night Maria would become the monster, her conflict a biological one waged between the forces of existence and nothingness. Once I sent her down that road, neither she nor her mother could stop her progress. That innocent girl, no matter how much the spirit willed to cease being, would be forced by a hungry body to kill and feed, kill and feed, until the dead that piled up at her feet paid for the sins of the likes of her stepmother and me, who conspired to return her to this life, and for her own sin which was the greatest in the eyes of God: contempt for it.

My reward came soon enough. Through my actions, whether intentionally or just from a wistful desire of mine, or even sheer dumb luck, she became the bait that brought those servants of Yomi to me. Little did I know, beyond a foolish romantic wish in which I checked myself from believing too deeply, that the mysterious nature of her death and resurrection, and the deaths of those men who encountered her, culminating in that location—obvious to me now when I look back on the evidence—were all I had needed all that time to bring that man out of his hole, like a trail of breadcrumbs leading him right to my doorstep.

Sources had told me his name and how to summon him, but I was skeptical. It seemed only natural to be. I did not actually believe he would come.

Thinking of him, and of seeing his image in the newspaper some years ago, I wandered from Maria's hotel in downtown Nagasaki to the Oura Church, the white facade of which stood gleaming at the top of the stairs in the crisp autumn sun, a snow-capped Christian Mountain of Heaven, braced by its two towering palms which appeared to me like the proverbial lampposts standing at the foot of the throne, dark and straight against the bright church and the sky behind. I went in part looking for the solace of the womb which I had sought in my university days; but mostly I went because he had come here once—perhaps out of the same innate need that had drawn me to a phantom of belief, and had claimed my mother so fiercely. Perhaps due to that same nameless sin that plagued me—the sin of merely existing.

Despite the tourists that milled around outside, I found the building dark and mostly empty. Similarly, though the exterior passed with some satisfaction as a product of Japan's modern assimilation of outside influences, the interior with its groin vaulting and magnificent Gothic altar betrayed its figures' Western origins. There was an awkwardness inside those walls, a pressure forced on the beams and the spaces in between, simultaneously pushing and pulling between the two worlds that so wanted to contradict one another by their very nature. The structure itself seemed to know it did not belong here; yet, like the martyrs it commemorated, it struggled to its very foundation to exist, contradiction and all, if only because someone who once lived had erected it.

Someone else had brought it into existence—someone else had placed the statues of Christ and the saints in its Japanese niches. Yet the building carried on its beams the blame for its own being.

I thought of grandfather's patient as the last tourist left and I stood alone before the altar in the dark, gazing up at its arches, up toward the crucifix and the stained-glass window. Though I expected no answer, I prayed then. Capriciously, I lowered myself to one knee and prayed that he might be sent to me. And just as I was doing that, I heard the door behind me slam open as someone rushed into the nave. That person stopped, perhaps at the sight of me, and paused to catch his breath.

His voice echoed in the church. "Um . . . Just now, did you happen to see . . ." Then he cut himself off. Although he was at my back, perhaps he was suddenly struck by that same queer feeling, too: the feeling of looking in a mirror.

Such mundane words; and yet they suddenly seemed the most beautiful I had ever heard, if only for the voice that formed them. That voice that was everything I had dreamed of it being, so full of human emotions: uncertainty, excitement, wariness, hope. Emotions so subtle and insignificant that were magnified in the vibrations of the air around me—the particular vibrations caused by him. So overwhelmed was I by the mere fact that he was there, standing at my back, that a tear freed itself from my good eye and rolled down my cheek as I rose and started to turn. If it had all proved to be an illusion, I might have given up hope for good right there; but it was not, and the reality of him met and exceeded even my grandiose expectations.

If I had any complaint, it was that our encounter was all too brief, as he departed not a minute later to continue his search for Maria. I knew I would see him again; our fates were intertwined; but it was sheer agony waiting for that moment to come. He reappeared in the same area the next day, having dessert in a trattoria and then strolling the park. In order that I might catch his attention, I summoned one of my creatures to bite a random girl who was near him—only to make her faint; I did not desire another young girl's death to be on my hands—certain that he would be moved by the curiosity hardwired into his being as a shinigami and the compassion ingrained in his person to help.

I was not disappointed. And as he knelt with the startled mother beside the girl, I approached and offered my services as a visiting doctor. I watched fascinated as recognition slowly crept into his eyes—those moving crimson eyes that I had never been allowed the privilege to see in living color—and the battle that waged in his psyche was written clearly in their expression: the intuition that must have warned him of me, and the rational mind that tried to suppress it. For a time, the latter won out, and perhaps feeling that he should give me the benefit of the doubt, or again perhaps out of a niggling sense of distrust, he accompanied us to a covered rest area, waiting outside while I pretended to examine the girl whose system was, by then, already in the process of recovering.

The sun was setting in a ruddy sky when the girl and her mother finally bid us farewell, and still he remained by my side. Perhaps even then he was unconsciously aware of the similarities in our natures, though he would not have been able to explain it if asked. He had blushed sometime earlier when I had jokingly mistaken him for the girl's father, and introduced himself by name. Tsuzuki Asato. Now as we watched the mother and daughter go he beamed with the satisfaction that came to him naturally from helping others; and both of these reactions I relished as though I had an intimate hand in their creation. It made me loath to do anything to upset our new friendship, as I was all too aware how shortlived it would be.

His voice was gentle as he said to me, "I'm sorry you had to cut your sightseeing short."

"Not at all. I was only fulfilling my duty as a doctor."

The child turned back to face us and wave, and he said suddenly to their retreating backs: "Humans are resilient creatures, aren't they?"

There was something in the way he said "humans" that took me momentarily aback. Why, Tsuzuki; what would lead you to believe that?

"I'm surprised to hear that, coming from you," I said under my breath.

He turned to me. "Sorry?"

"I said, is that so? Forgive me, it is just that it has been my experience that they are altogether too . . . fragile."

"Well, what I meant was . . ."

But I knew what he meant. He had a faith in humanity that I did not, and for a moment I envied him that. I had felt the same way once, long ago, until the evidence mounted up against that conviction could no longer be ignored. Was that a conclusion he had reached through experience, or merely a platitude he told himself to keep going?

"No matter what advances are made by science," I explained, "human beings cannot escape death and disease." I lit a cigarette, lingering for a moment on the transient initial rush of the nicotine through my system. "I recently came to discover that there are limits to what even a doctor can do. Is that not frustrating?"

As expected, the smile fell from his lips. Of course, who would know how frustrating that truth really was but he—he who dealt death on a daily basis? The perplexed expression that remained on his face was so endearing to me I was struck with an urge I could not ignore to touch him—any part of him, just to reassure myself that he was indeed real, and not a figment of my desperate imagination. As I stepped toward him, however, the wary look returned to his features, any trace of the smile I had found so vibrant disappearing completely. It broke my heart to see, as the last thing I wanted was to be shunned by this man; and so my hand was detoured at the last moment and came instead to rest on the picnic table on which he leaned. Only the fabric of our sleeves brushed across one another; but there was something in that ghost of a touch that affected me, and I know it affected him as well: something magnetic. The magnetism of perfect extremes, he in black and myself in white. I breathed in his scent, which was not at all medicinal, nor the cloying, lilacy memory of Saki's breath that I had expected, but something entirely unique and, ironically, human. Tsuzuki, on the other hand, held his breath until the moment had safely passed. He could ignore the strange bond that existed between us no more than I could, but he could resist it. Perhaps that would change with time, I told myself, even if he did not immediately warm to me.

That was what I believed, at least, until the Kurosaki boy came between us and foiled my plans once again. So I lured him away from Tsuzuki's side and used him as bait. Just as Saki had been mistaken about me in our adolescent years, I was a fool to believe this crime of passion would change Tsuzuki's perception of me for the better. I was foolish to believe he would catch onto the rules of the game I had wrapped us actors in, let alone that he would play by them. But I had blinded myself to that reality—had been blinded, in fact, by him, and by my dreams for him. Even if it had not been for long, I had enjoyed parrying wits with him once and was eager to do it again, the scientist in me yearning to discover all the peculiar nuances that made him what he was.

He agreed to meet me in the church where we had first met, if only for the boy's sake, and I confessed to him the seeming miracle of our first run-in. In contrast to that clear day, the weather was overcast and cool as we climbed the hills of Nagasaki and strolled the paths that tourists did, as though in recognition of the chill that had descended between us since my one, little betrayal.

Yet, despite the situation, I had no ulterior motive for our sightseeing than the simple desire to stand in his presence. I took him to the memorial of the 26 Christian missionaries and converts martyred by crucifixion by the shogunate; and in the adjoining museum we glimpsed the artifacts mounted in glass cases that stood as proof of the lives of those resilient people, who, barring the option of apostasy, were forced to hide their existence in order to maintain it, or else suffer the penalty of death for the strength of their conviction of faith. What did he think? I asked, my own thoughts wandering to the parallels between these sixteenth-century martyrs and the victims of the A-bomb, who were sacrificed so that their countrymen, men like my grandfather, might learn the lessons of pride. Did he believe it was worth it—he who was there in the summer of '45—who had slit his own wrists seven decades before: was it worth dying for something so abstract?

Although we were in public, inspired by the sense of transience that surrounded the place, I found the courage to touch his cheek then; and he allowed it, not knowing any better. He allowed me a closer look at his strange eyes, which seemed even farther removed from the realm of the human upon this intimate inspection. But if Tsuzuki recognized any parallels between the histories of those around us and his own life, about which I was insatiably curious, he gave no indication, and we moved on.

There was a shop in Dejima that catered to doll collectors. Like mother had done to my boyhood self, I drew him aside hoping he might glean from my own appreciation some insight into the dolls' significance. "A doll can be repaired if broken," I told him: "Therein lies their superiority to human beings. While advances in technology lead to new cures, as we discover new cures so do we discover new diseases." As I caressed the face of a doll on display, the white china beneath the pads of my fingers recalled again how Tsuzuki's cheek had felt against my hand. It had been as cold as this, if not as unyielding. "We only wander around in circles. We are far from finding the elixir of life." Very far indeed. . . .

I waited for him to get it—to contradict me with some optimistic nonsense, and deny the proximity of this metaphor to his own biology, but he said nothing. My very plans for him were revealed in that shop plain for him to see, and he chose not to heed that fair warning—to take what glimmer of compassion I in my weakness was extending to him. I picked up two dolls, a rich girl and a poor girl, Tsubaki and her Irene, wondering which one he would find more valuable, and if his answer would be counter to my own conclusions about society. If it would condemn me. I waited for him to say _anything_, anything that might give me a clue as to _what_ he was inside, but was met only with silence in return. Instead, his gaze was turned to the windows; and the boy's name—a name I was beginning to despise exponentially—was on his distracted lips. That was _not_ how I had intended for him to play the game. My patience ran thin.

As did his apparently. In an intimate coffee shop, surrounded by the afternoon crowd of Western tourists and young lovers, he could stand the casual topics our game of cat and mouse had wandered to no longer, and slammed his palms on the table and stood, demanding I "cut the crap."

"Please do not make a spectacle of yourself, Mr Tsuzuki," I said, inexplicably troubled by the questioning gazes that momentarily turned our way. "I'm not sure what I said to warrant this behavior." I had only been trying to make the experience comfortable for him when his outburst occurred. And, of course, unlike himself, it bothered me not at all that as we spoke his boy was restrained and slowly suffering.

He sat slowly. "This is all just an amusement to you, isn't it?"

I could not help a smile at his snarl as he made that observation. Even that stock reaction was perfectly executed.

"Yes. It's very amusing spending time with you."

"Muraki, what is it you're after?"

"If I commit some sufficiently outrageous crime, the Judgment Bureau will send out its troops," I told him simply. "Everything I have done here has been for the purpose of meeting you."

If he was surprised that I knew enough about the bureaucracy of the dead to say what I did, he gave no indication. He seemed more concerned to hear I had been searching for him. "So _I'm_ the one you want?"

The intensity of my gaze that could not be swayed to move from his face must have been confirmation enough.

"Then let Hisoka go."

Again with the boy. His constant reappearance in our conversations annoyed me, and a part of me wished I had done away with him. But what would that have solved? He was already dead. I told Tsuzuki not to worry about him, that I knew that boy well enough. "After all, I was the one who killed him."

It was an admission that had to be made; sooner or later, Tsuzuki would have found out and I preferred the truth come from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

However, something changed forever between us when I said it. At that moment Tsuzuki made a decision about us, that our natures would always be in opposition to one another. He did not know then how deluded he was; and that all my efforts, rather than the cruel pageantry they appeared to be on the surface, were to bring him to the same understanding to which I had come. An understanding that he had no doubt known well in life, and repressed in the deep abyss of the subconscious: that this perfect body that could not die was an abomination.

An abomination I would make mine, for one purpose or another. Each time I looked upon him, each time he resisted me and the truth he knew in his body's cells, I desired him even more, as a sinner desires a tangible salvation. And to think there was a time I thought I would be content if I could merely look upon that man.

I should have known long ago that would never be enough. No, nothing ever would be.

—

The leaves in Kansai are at the peak of their fall, cascading in red showers in the lanes and mimicking those pure white and lavender ones of early spring that so whipped up my fantasies into damning perversions all those years ago. But it is not the freshness of cherry and fragrant plum blossoms that reaches me, surrounds and seduces me, but the tired, musky scent of rot and mildew. In tired, musty Kyoto, the cherry trees set alight by their variegated foliage tell me nothing, conspire nothing, only stand there silent and deaf, making me feel the fool who has just realized he was talking to himself all along.

The hour approaches when all my labors and my sins that have piled up like these autumn leaves come to fruition; yet I feel myself descending into madness, the madness of my mother, the madness of Oedipus, of Kiyomori, and have no one to share it with me, no one to make me feel the martyr and redeem me from what I know I deserve. Those nameless women are dead, the boy is dead, Mr Kakyouin and Dr Satomi now are dead, all to bring back the evil soul of the one who almost destroyed me out of a most unholy idea of love. I must have a deathwish. But this time I understand clearly: I am mad. Beyond hope or want of cure I am mad. And if it is my undoing, I care only that I may see the horror on that devil's face before I am dragged to my rightful place in whatever hell awaits those who have fallen so far as I.

And I wonder: will I wake and find Tsuzuki there with me?

He has regressed to the moment of his sin—to that eight-year-long moment he must have thought would never end when he was left to repeat it in his waking dreams. To that moment when grandfather snapped the shutters of a camera and immortalized his beautiful image in fragile celluloid—in the abject suffering that to the human eye that knows not the bounds to comprehend it can only, and insufficiently, be described as _a-wa-re_. Pathetic. Moving. I vowed I would be there when he shattered—that I would heap a mountain of bones at his feet, and catch him when he fell from it to set him on the throne on which his name was writ. I vowed I would be there to pick up the pieces, comfort his soul, and refashion him into that monster he was meant to be. Then we will no longer be alone.

Unless I am destroyed by my own masterpiece. That, however, is an outcome I must chance. I have no fear of it. If it is my fate to die by his hand, then I would be a fool not to accept it this time; but I will not go before I have dragged his soul down to the level of mine, and baptized him anew in the blood he tries in vain to forget.

The only thing that remains is to inform Oriya I am leaving. I have no doubt he will come here when he finds me missing, to this cemetery for unborn children. It seems a fitting conclusion to a journey into darkness, which started three decades ago on some fateful day I gazed up at that wall of sorrowful dolls and was touched by their madness. He will not like what I have to say. He will hate me for involving him in my affairs one last time, even though I leave with him a second chance for redemption—a choice between saving my life and saving his soul. Perhaps burdening him with that decision is the cruelest thing I can put him through, he who I have put through so much already. However, even then I know he will hate me most for leaving. Whether I survive this or am finally allowed my peace, I will honor that one eternal wish of his: I will disappear and trouble him no more.

Somehow I suspect that for the first time he will not be glad to be rid of me.


	5. Tsuzuki File, Part A

**For reference,** the Sino-Japanese War was 1894-1895, the Russo-Japanese 1904-1905. The Meiji period ended and Taisho began in 1912. The date of General Nogi's death in the same year has been fudged a little to fit the timeline.

* * *

3

_Senseless years thunder by  
Millions are willing to give their lives for you  
Does nothing live on?_

—

Tsuzuki Asato never knew his father. That man had disappeared sometime after he was born, when Asato was too young to remember; and even before then, others told him, that man had rarely come around.

According to his mother he had died in the first months of the Russo-Japanese War, but this did not account for his whereabouts in the four years before the war started. It was mostly the reason she gave others for his absence. They would ask no more questions of her then, although they would wonder if her misfortune was really a coincidence. Her husband, Mr Tsuzuki, who fathered her daughter Ruka in his short life, was confirmed killed in combat in the last year of the Sino-Japanese War before that. It would seem she was rather unlucky indeed to lose two loves to war on foreign soil. However, Asato's great-aunt, Ruka's grandmother, and his mother's teenage brother maintained that Asato's father left his mother for greener pastures, as they put it, which left Asato with the impression for many years, until his mother corrected him, that his father was a cowherd. They pointed to the fact that he had never married Asato's mother, and made a legitimate son of the child he sired with her. They said it was proof he had something to hide. Still, at least outwardly, the family's respect for the man who had comforted her in her grief grew as they came to believe he too had died honorably for his country. They did not wonder why a man who was so obviously not a soldier to look at him would have left to fight, because the whole of his past had been carefully shrouded in mystery. No one truly knew what he had done with his life—not even Asato's mother. All they knew was that he had been very wealthy, and had shared none of that wealth with their family. Sometimes his mother believed so strongly in her own story of his disappearance it was as though it were truth; and Asato kept silent when he saw how it comforted her. He, however, drew strength from the belief that his father still existed somewhere in the world, beyond Tokyo perhaps, maybe even in the strange foreign lands with their strangely dressed people portrayed in picture books.

As a young boy, he took comfort in the photograph of his parents that sat in a place of honor in the humble family shrine, right next to the portrait of the late Mr Tsuzuki. It was the only picture that existed of his father, so they paid no heed that his mother was in the photograph as well, and never thought the presence of her image in that sacred alcove might bear ill omen. Asato enjoyed his mother's stories about the man even more than the fairy tales his grandmother told him, even though it soon became obvious even his mother knew very little about the man she had loved. In his mind, the man was an adventurer, maybe a prince of some sort, who traveled all over the world exploring the wild jungles of darkest Africa and defeating foreign schemers with his charming witticisms, like the heroes of Western movies. Surely it was only because of his infamy that he was forced to leave his mother, Asato preferred to believe.

He looked like an intelligent and worldly man. In that photograph he wore trousers and a frock coat—a contrast to his mother's kimono that was not at all upsetting or incongruous. His hair was short and slicked back, and he held himself with a proud and regal posture. He looked much older than his mother, who had been in her mid-twenties when she gave birth to Asato, with his tired face and faint laugh lines in the corners of his eyes and mouth. He had a kind face, however, and Asato imagined jealously how full of laughter their small and quiet house would be had that man stayed. It was only a sepia photograph, but he knew from his mother's constant praises that the man's eyes were purple just like his own. She loved Asato dearly for that trait, which she always said reminded her of his father.

Sometimes tears appeared in her eyes when she said this, though she smiled.

And he could only take her word, as the only thing he could remember from those nebulous days of infancy was the man's gentle and impenetrable smile. The rest was a hazy shadow, a dark and featureless figure constantly recorded in backlighting into his subconscious. And maybe even that, he wondered, was nothing more than a wistful dream.

—

Ever since he was a young boy, Asato knew he was different physically from other boys his age. It was not just the peculiar color of his eyes, which would occasionally cause others to stare at him as his mother led him down the street, that made him so. The queer fact was that when he scraped his knee or elbow while playing, his wounds would heal with remarkable speed, the skin sometimes returning to normal within a day, and there were none of the usual childhood scars to be found on his body. Neither could he ever remember being ill. While the other boys on his street bore scratches from their tumbles that were red for weeks, or contracted measles and were pockmarked long after they recovered, his fair skin remained as whole and unmarred as the day he was born—if anything, perhaps even more perfect.

It was not a condition that particularly worried Asato or his mother. Instead he was thankful for his unique trait, and felt somewhat sorry for others whose bodies made them suffer not only their physical ailments but also the embarrassment that came with them. Those weak bodies that made their bearers suffer were to him like cages without keys, and it tortured him to think there was no way he could free those people trapped in them from their pain. He could not predict that what made him special and fortunate would ever be cause for ridicule, though he supposed it was only natural for others to envy it. Indeed, it never crossed his mind that there might not be others who shared that trait with him.

It was his sister Ruka, his elder by seven years, who taught him otherwise. She scolded him once for making light of his condition and told him that what he had was a unique gift that others would not understand. What stayed with Asato, however, was not what she said but how she said it, as though that unique gift made her feel ashamed and even afraid.

Asato loved his sister—loved her more dearly than anyone else in the world, even, if he had to choose one over the other, more dearly than he loved his mother—so when he saw how his comments had shamed Ruka, he vowed never to speak capriciously of that gift again. From then on, his unique gift would be a secret kept between himself and his sister and his mother. Asato did not think to question Ruka's motives for scolding him thus. Surely, he thought, his sister only raised her voice against him to protect him.

More than that, however, he hated more than anything to see Ruka suffer, especially on his account. She had a slight frame that always made her appear small and frail no matter how tall she grew or how much she ate, and her large dark eyes carried an expression of perpetual sadness and fatigue on even the brightest days. Even this deceptive appearance of fragility only added to her beauty in a strange way, just as one can't help but appreciate more a spider's web sprinkled with raindrops. Like a tenuous spider's thread, Ruka's slightest displeasure moved him to such pity and admiration simultaneously that he ached in his heart for her and for her happiness. So it seemed to Asato early in life that it was not she who should be saddled with protecting him, but rather he would make it his lifelong duty to protect her.

—

Theirs was a poor family. That much Asato knew simply by looking at others around him. No one in their family owned more than a few sets of clothes at any one time, aside from those things Asato's father had given them, which his mother deemed too precious for everyday use. But they were never wanting for much. Though she lived simply now, on what odd jobs she could find in addition to the money from the government for her late husband's sacrifice, their mother was an educated woman, and she instilled in her children an appreciation for the written word and a keen interest in learning about the world around them. Before Asato was old enough to attend school, he listened to Ruka read the latest news and serials aloud at the breakfast table as his mother nodded over her stitching and occasionally corrected a reading, and let his mind wander. Sometimes he would think of his father accomplishing this or that which made the headlines, if he could not think of what the real news-maker would look like. The written word, even if only spoken to him by another, became a way to escape his uneventful childhood with its dull chores—though come dinner time, when Ruka returned from school to the aromas of boiling potato stew and rice, his own return to the home where he was most content was easy and instantaneous.

They seemed to have a good life in the city. So it came as some surprise to Asato when, when he was still too young to attend school, the three that made up his family's household moved to a developing neighborhood on the outskirts of town, where rice paddies and simple wooden houses competed with paved roads and telegraph poles, and oxen carts with horse-drawn cabs and the trains that stopped a few times a day at the tiny station. Though the modern inventions of bustling Tokyo encroached year by year, theirs remained a stubbornly old-fashioned town, with prices that reflected such a way of life. Asato's mother was convinced it would be a better place to raise her children than the streets of the big city, where mobbings were a daily occurrence and childhood innocence passed as swiftly as a branch caught in the current of the Sumida River.

So Asato looked forward to the start of school in this quiet town. His curiosity had already been piqued for some time by his older sister Ruka's stories of her own experiences at middle school. Those around him expressed their high expectations for his success in academics when they saw his precociousness, or the kindness he exhibited toward all of God's creation. Would he grow up to be a man of science, and raise his family to a position of wealth and prestige as a doctor of medicine? Or perhaps he would join the police force and come to the aid of others through the pursuit of justice and civil order. Perhaps, too, even the public career of a novelist was not entirely out of the question for the outgoing and quick-witted boy, in this budding democratic age. Whichever the case, however, the Asato of the present, for his part, despite the unswerving love of his mother and sister, was simply eager and desperate to experience the world outside of home—a world like the one Ruka went away to every day which he was not privy to, surrounded by peers with the same interests, with all the knowledge in existence at his fingertips.

That was the expectation he held in his heart and in his bright smile when his mother saw him off the first day. As he walked down the dusty lane dotted with budding cherries and scattering plums in his best suit of clothes, a Western shirt and trousers, he grinned to himself and thought of the schoolyard pleasures that he was sure would be his throughout the years to follow.

When he arrived, however, the other boys laughed behind their hands and whispered to one another in voices still loud enough for him to hear about his appearance. Glancing around at his classmates, Asato instantly felt very out of place. All of the boys and girls in his classroom were wearing kimono. In fact, the only one beside himself who was not was their teacher. To add insult to this embarrassment, none of the students would talk to him or make eye contact when he looked their way. Every once in a while, he felt some girl's stare fixated on him, and would turn to smile only to have her look away and pretend unsuccessfully that she had not been staring. It must have been his style of dress that made him stand out, he told himself, even though it was really his face at which they had been looking.

He told his mother when she asked him about his day with the cool, collected air of a scientist testing a hypothesis that if he wore Japanese clothes to class the next day the problem would be resolved, so certain was he that it was his Western clothing that had set him apart from the boys and girls of this small neighborhood, rather than some other reminder of his father entirely.

But the other students' aloofness and twittering continued even then; and when he tried to approach other boys over lunch they would flash him smiles that were anything but genuine or apologetic as they made some weak excuse to move away.

It was agony for the boy to see all his hopes for the school year be dashed and come to nothing so soon. The young Asato racked his brain but could not be sure what it was he could have done to deserve such treatment, until an older boy, about eight or nine years old, who seemed to have a large following of companions approached him in the schoolyard some time later and said, "You got funny eyes, don't you?" Until then, Asato had forgotten just how different his eyes were from everyone else's.

"I guess," he said, uncomfortable under the older boy's scrutinizing gaze. He shrugged. "I've had them all my life."

To his surprise the older boy laughed—but it was a kind laugh, a genuine sort of laugh like he was amused by Asato's answer. "Did you guys hear that?" he said to his friends. "He said he's had them all his life." He turned back to Asato and made as though to push Asato's hair out of his face for a better look, but stopped himself, as though he were suddenly afraid to touch Asato. "Where d'you suppose you get eyes like that?" he said instead.

"My mother says I got them from my father."

"What, you mean you don't know?"

"What d'you know, this guy's a bastard!" one of the older boy's companions laughed, slapping the shoulder of the boy next to him, and another joined in: "Bet 'is dad's a demon. Only demons got eyes 'at color."

But the older boy's face screwed up when he heard that, and he looked just as ashamed as Asato felt. "You morons. Shut up, all of you," he told his friends, and to Asato's surprise they did. "Don'tcha know there ain't no such thing as demons?"

The older boy introduced himself as B. Despite the way he had told off his companions, his manner with Asato seemed anything but curt or insincere. He had the type of gaze that made its target seem like the only person in the world, and his smile was very warm and kind when he asked Asato's name.

"Asato," B said, turning the name over in his mouth, "how'd you like to have lunch with us, then?"

B's friends protested, but Asato did not hear them. He was too pleased to hear them. Of course, what boy his age would not have liked nothing more than to have lunch with the most popular boy in the entire elementary school? It was not the kind of offer someone in Asato's position could afford to question, nor did he want to. He accepted, and felt like he was on cloud nine all day, because all through lunch it had seemed as though B's attention had been on Asato alone. B had even confided in him that he had no doubt they would become fast friends.

—

Though the blossoms had barely scattered from the cherry trees, it seemed to the young Asato at last that school life was beginning to look up. He did well in the classroom and was often called upon by his teacher to answer questions, and at lunchtime looked forward to being in the company of B, who had a way of speaking to him like he was the only one in his circle of friends that truly mattered. Even the other boys who had first made fun of him, seeing this, were kind to Asato; and it did not bother Asato to think that maybe they were only pretending to be so because they feared falling from B's favor. Moreover, Ruka and Asato's mother were delighted to see him so contented, and above all he did not want anything to ruin what happiness they gained from his happiness.

Slowly, however, Asato's standing with B began to change. The longer Asato was in his company, it seemed, the more comfortable B felt making comments about Asato—comments he had once chastised his followers for making themselves, about Asato's eyes and his clothes and mannerisms, and his family. Since he was including Asato in his group, B seemed to think, it was all right to have some fun at his expense in return for the favor. And though this was difficult logic for a boy of seven to argue against, it shamed Asato nonetheless to hear the boy he had trusted so much speculating about Asato's father's unwillingness to marry his mother, and even more to hear B speak of Ruka's beauty in the same vulgar manner he used to talk about other girls in town. Indeed, the latter did more than shame Asato, it angered him as well, for it made him wonder how close B had come to his sister when Asato was not watching for him to make the conclusions he did; and he came to feel jealously protective of Ruka. When he asked her about it, she claimed not to have spoken to B; but based on what intimate details B told him, Asato grew more and more uncertain about whose story he should believe, and he hated that very much.

He hated it almost as much as knowing he could do nothing about it. If he did, he might lose B's companionship completely, maybe even incur his distaste, and Asato dreaded that outcome as well. He dreaded a return to that utter isolation that had made those first few weeks of school almost unbearable. So he played along, laughing at his own expense when B's companions laughed, though he was disgusted with himself for doing so; and meanwhile he loathed his weak self that could not stand up for his mother and older sister except in the privacy of his own thoughts.

But what seemed the worst to Asato was not enough for B. Gradually his teasing turned to goading, as he began asking Asato to perform tasks the points of which Asato could never ascertain. True they were mostly harmless things, the silly stunts and contests and such which children use to develop their own hierarchies, and it was not as though B did not ask his older friends to participate in them as well. As far as the adults were concerned, this was normal behavior for boys their age, part of an innate competitiveness that was best explored now and gotten over with, rather than be allowed to develop into an immature urge they carried around when they reached adulthood. Nor would they have seen it as anything out of the ordinary that these childhood trials bothered Asato. That too, to his constant dismay, was deemed normal.

It seemed, though, that for B they were something more, something not quite normal at all. It seemed to Asato that his older friend got a weird kind of pleasure from seeing his followers obey his most outlandish commands. He would laugh when they failed or refused, and with each new proposal there was a certain glimmer in his eyes that filled Asato with a dread that sat in his stomach like a lead weight. He was relieved when those commands were given to other boys, but he lived in constant fear of the lunch hour or afternoon when he would be called upon to perform for B's delight.

Yet, when he looked back on that time later in life, it was not wholly that particular fear that formed the core of that heavy sense of dread.

Again, most of the time B's tasks were harmless, and fairly painless. Touch the back wall of the general store and run out before the clerk sees you, for example, or steal some sen from your parents to buy the group candy. At worst they could be embarrassing. But other tasks sat poorly indeed with Asato. One contest the boys liked to play was this. They would dash out of class when the final bell rang and wait some ways up the road for the girls to pass by them on their way home. When the girls walked by, the boys would leap out into the road and chase the girls and pull their hair. Whoever could make the most stubborn of the girls cry was held in esteem by his fellows, a man among the boys.

To Asato, however, it was a game of cruelty that had no purpose other than for B to show off his control. Yet even despite this revelation, B's control was absolute, and even Asato was able to bear only so many calls of "coward" before he too was sucked into the action; though he avoided looking into those girls' eyes as though they were the very eyes of Medusa herself, whose glistening blackness would turn him to stone in front of those whose affirmation he so desperately needed.

In the height of summer, water bugs and cicadas became targets for pitching practice, and katydids and fireflies were caught for show and slow suffocation in glass jars around evening fires. Most people, Asato knew, even his own mother and sister, thought nothing of killing insects, even if they were stingy about _other_ Buddhist commandments. But didn't the priests teach them that that firefly or that mantis could easily be the reincarnated soul of a human being? Knowing this, when Asato studied their faces each time they were caught in his hands, he could not help imagining their tiny black eyes were staring back at him with just as much wonder, hiding tiny insect minds behind those eyes that were not unlike the wet, black eyes of the girls. At those moments he felt so strongly in his heart that those insects were trying their very best to live, too.

—

There was a young woman in town who all the boys admired, not least among them B and his group. She was perhaps no more than twenty or twenty-two years old, and possessed a wholesome beauty in her warm, oval face and demure frame that was praised by other women in the town. She lived alone with her mother in a lovely house at the end of a quiet street shaded by the trees. Yamada was their name, and the boys would whisper it among themselves when they saw the two women approaching. When they would pass, however, the normally unstoppable tongues of the boys went still and their eyes watched the young Ms Yamada go by them, hoping to catch a smile from her, however slight it might be, or even just her flickering gaze. To have that gaze alight on one was enough to make him the envy of his companions.

And none was so envied in this regard as B. To listen to him tell it, it would seem that among all of them he alone was on familiar terms with Ms Yamada and her mother. He was full of stories about how he had run errands for them, and been amply rewarded by Ms Yamada in particular with treats and warm words best whispered from ear to ear. For this B's companions at once hated him jealously and held him up as a standard of the masculine worldliness they wished to emulate.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to Asato when B suggested to them a new game that had the Yamadas at its center. He suggested they play a prank on the Yamadas by making them think robbers had entered their house. To Asato this sounded like the surest way to a beating, but B reassured them all that once Ms Yamada discovered that he was responsible she would shrug the whole thing off as the joke it was meant to be and they would suffer no repurcusion. The other boys could not help but take B at his word; after all, no one among them was better known by the Yamadas than B, and if he said there would be no harm done then who were they to question?

Despite this, only a handful of boys could find no excuse to get them out of implementing B's plan. Asato was one of them. Each time he tried to back out or express his uncertainty, B called him worthless, a scared little girl, or worse. The threat of being relegated to outsider status once again was the most effective tool, just as it had always been; and Asato went along, convincing himself all the while how it would all turn out with the Yamadas unhurt. Lately it had become all too easy to do that.

B knew just when the Yamadas went out to the market. So one day, while they were gone, the boys climbed over the fence and sneaked into the house shaded by trees at the end of the street. It was not a large house, but it was larger than any Asato had ever lived in, with wide, bright rooms and a veranda looking over a well-kept, enclosed garden just outside the dining room. Some knick-knacks and books were arranged neatly on shelves and on the top of the _tansu_ chest in one room, in the corner of which was a gramophone on a table, and a bowl of apples picked from the garden was sitting in the center of the dining table. A bit of embroidery sitting on the edge of the same table, waiting for the women's return, was the only thing that did not seem to have its own place; and seeing it there suddenly made Asato think of his own mother, doing needlework over their old, worn table in the small, dark dining room of their own home, which had no apple trees outside of it.

Which had no knick-knacks, aside from a few sundry items kept hidden in drawers or else displayed in the family shrine in lieu of a _tokonoma_ alcove. Which had no music brightening its darkness, nor even any instruments on which to play music. Which could not come close to the rich simplicity of this house with its plainness, its lowliness.

The beauty of the Yamadas' house suddenly aroused such jealous admiration in Asato that he was ashamed of his own household. Perhaps it was for that reason that when he saw the other boys rifling through drawers, pulling out linens and kimono and spilling them on the floor, he could no longer find the capacity within himself to stop them—nor even the desire to stop them. A part of him wanted to tear apart the utter perfection of the house as well, and bring it down to the level of his own home—the floors of which remained stained and chipped no matter how spotless the tatami placed over them, and whose doors continued to stick in their jambs despite the glowing white paper on them. In that moment, a part of Asato wanted nothing more than to make this house and that one equal.

Yet in the fore of his mind remained the promise he had made to himself that the Yamadas would not be hurt by what he and the others did here today. It was never his intention to ruin the Yamadas' possessions, merely startle the two women a bit as per B's plans. So he took some of the books from their shelves and laid them on the floor in a meticulously strewn manner, some resting on their open pages with their spines bent carefully back. He found a cache of letters in the _tansu_ and scattered these on top of the books. Then he went into the kitchen, where he found B looking through the canisters that sat in rows on the shelf and sniffing their contents, occasionally taking a taste for himself. Asato pulled out pots and pans and lay empty bottles on their sides, and the violent sound of all of this rattling together no matter how careful his movements fascinated him strangely, making him want more of this careful play of pseudo-destruction. He opened the pantry and set sweet potatoes and canned beef rolling out after one another in a little parade.

Only when B took something from a tin canister with some foreign language written on it and pushed it into his hands did Asato stop with a sudden doubt about what he had done. It was money. Asato nearly dropped it. Instead, he pushed it back, admonishing B: he had said they were only to _play_ at robbers, not be robbers themselves. B laughed. He had said that, he replied simply, and put the money back.

"Take some of this instead, then," he told Asato, and dumped a handful of rice into his cupped palms. The white grains spilled through Asato's fingers and bounced off the wooden floor like pearls from a broken necklace, and he asked what he should do with it. "Whatever you like!" B laughed, and he led Asato back out into the dining room, leaving a trail of rice behind them.

Asato scattered it on the dining table, then he tipped over the bowl of apples for good measure. B caught one that came rolling out and took a large bite out of it. The flesh was juicy and crisp, and the sound of him biting into it was like the sound of life itself. He tossed the apple to Asato, who had a taste as well, though his bites were small and possessing of an actual, physical hunger.

It was just a simple apple, picked from someone's garden, but to him then its sweetness was like the sweetness of dessert after a meal of carrots and leeks—like a cigarette is to a soldier, a small but just payment for a job he hadn't really enjoyed doing but had done well. Asato closed his eyes and concentrated on the fruit. It was only the sickly crack of china hitting the tatami that brought him abruptly back to the present.

He looked up to see B standing over the broken remains of one of the figurines that had graced the _tansu_. It was a Western piece, a porcelain young woman in eighteenth century dress. The head with its towering gray wig and the delicate torso had broken off from the full skirt, the underside of which now pointed up at them in a violated manner.

The apple fell from Asato's grasp. "What are you doing!" he shouted at B. "You never said anything about breaking anything!"

Why not? was B's retort, as though he really could find no reason to stop. He raised the broken figurine's companion, a young man with his arm outstretched as though in desperation to help the young woman. It was just a porcelain figurine, but Asato felt compelled to help it. It represented so much more in his eyes than the materials that had made it or the name that was stamped into its feet. He grabbed B's arm and wrestled the figurine away.

But the snarl on B's face almost made him wish he hadn't. The other boys had come at Asato's outburst, and B derided him in front of them, calling him a sissy afraid of breaking a few dolls: that's what happened when your father ran off after you were born. It was time to go anyway, he said; the Yamadas would be back at any moment; and with his companions in tow B made his way to the back door through which they had come, but not before he had ripped a few tears in the paper for good measure. Asato's feet felt like they were made of lead as they pulled him along after them.

The sight of the family shrine made him pause as he passed. Perhaps it was because unlike the rest of the house, this single feature was arranged in a manner almost identical to the shrine in his own home. In it was a photograph of a young couple on their wedding day, one of whom he recognized as Ms Yamada. The man beside her also appeared alone in a larger portrait beside it, and in this one he was dressed as a soldier. In fact, the young woman everyone had thought of as _Ms_ Yamada was in fact Mrs, the young widow of Mr Yamada who had died in the Russo-Japanese War. Though she had no children, the woman who lived here with her late husband's mother was nonetheless just like Asato's mother.

—

Within every child there exists the sincere belief that if one only wishes ardently enough even the worst of events will somehow undo itself.

That was what Asato wished now. He prayed so very hard that what had happened in the Yamadas' house had been nothing more than a dream; or, if it were not that, that somehow the damage he and the rest had done might magically reverse itself, and the Yamadas never know the difference.

Of course, such was not the way the world works.

By evening, word had spread of the Yamadas' plight. Neighbors warned each other to keep a close watch on their belongings. The local police became involved, swearing to bring the vandals to justice. Asato's mother came home with word of Mrs Yamada and her mother-in-law's distress. To return and find their home and belongings in such a ransacked state had been bad enough, but with Mr Yamada deceased the two women felt alone and defenseless in the house, and feared that such a thing might happen again, with worse results.

Seeing the way his mother and sister empathized with the Yamadas, their knitted brows expressing such worry for the two women they hardly knew, Asato could bear the torment of keeping secret what he had done no longer. When his sister asked over the dinner table why he had hardly touched his food, it all came out.

He confessed to them everything. He was so sorry, he said the whole way through—so sorry that he had caused Mrs Yamada and her mother-in-law such pain and worry; but even more sorry, though he did not come right out and say it so clearly, that he had let down his mother and sister like this. As he told the story, their expressions gradually changed from sympathy to shock to a look of such utter disappointment that Asato had never before witnessed in them. And he was its target. He kept expecting that at any moment their stern looks would dissolve into sympathy for him, that they would see how much _he_ was suffering, and that all would be forgiven; but this did not happen. Instead, Ruka hid her large, sorrowful eyes from him as she wiped a silent tear away with her sleeve; and his mother immediately rose from the table, leaving dinner unfinished, and dragged Asato with her to the Yamadas' before he could even protest.

There, before Mrs Yamada and her mother-in-law and the police detectives in the dining room he had helped wreck, Asato repeated everything he had just confessed to his mother and more. Never had he been more ashamed than he was when he said those words in that room and heard his mother apologizing for her son's behavior beside him, bowing as low and humbly as he was as though the failure were hers. It was in that room, with the rough weave of the tatami scratching his forehead, itself littered with the maggot-like white grains of rice he had scattered, that he fully understood that the pain he had caused did not belong exclusively to him; he had caused hardship for his mother, and for the detectives who had come to investigate, but most of all he had hurt the Yamadas gravely. He had never even bothered to think until now, as he saw the damage he and the others had caused through new eyes—eyes whose scales had fallen off only through such grave trespasses—that those letters that still lay scattered irreverently on the parlor floor might have been from Mrs Yamada's husband, written on a distant battlefield on the mainland. That thought was more than he could bear. As he bowed and sobbed and watched his own tears fall on the backs of his hands, his heart's only wish was that they might all forgive him, though he feared that what he had done was beyond forgiveness. He may have been a fool, but that did not mean he had acted with pure intentions either—not in the least; and even if he had, that did not change the fact that, for the Yamadas, the act of vandalism itself was an act of malice in which he had been a participant.

At one point he glanced up at Mrs Yamada. Her young, beautiful face was turned slightly down, her dark glistening eyes focused stubbornly on the tatami between them; and on her lips was the slightest smile that never parted to utter a sound, as though to say even a single word would bring a wave of uncontrollable grief she could not risk. It was her mother-in-law who answered for her, speaking to Asato's mother with a kindness that Asato knew was meant for her and not himself as she agreed to have Asato pay off his crime by helping to fix the damage.

But as for B, she told them, neither she nor her daughter knew who the boy was; nor did they care to know who it was who had caused them such anguish. At this revelation Asato started; and through his shame rose a single, tall flame of anger that flickered within him like the tongue of a snake. B had lied to him. He had lied in order to make Asato hurt two innocent women. Just as he had lied to undermine Asato's faith in his own sister. He had told Asato nothing but lies from the very beginning.

Their entire friendship had been a lie from the very beginning.

That truth became immediately apparent at school, as B and his companions blamed Asato for the beatings and humiliation they had received at home with their glares that were like daggers flying through the air, aiming straight at his heart. Their stares roused a certain amount of fear and regret in Asato instinctively, yet on the other hand he also felt as though a great weight had been taken from his shoulders. Like a person newly enlightened to the truth of existence, now that he saw how shallow their vows of friendship had been, and how shallow their abilities to feel remorse for what they had done ran, Asato was more embarrassed to think he had ever considered them friends of his than he was to lose their companionship.

While they groused after class, he made the daily trip to the Yamadas to pay off the debt he owed them, cleaning and fixing what material things he could in place of the inner wounds that he knew were forever beyond his power to mend. Just as he could never fix the figurine of the young woman that B had broken, he thought—though even that returned to its place on the _tansu_ beside the young man after a week, painstakingly glued back together, though it would forever bear the signs of his trespasses in the cracks that encircled its bodice and delicate arms. The human psyche was a lot like that, he came to think. Though it may be broken and chipped by others along the way, it has the will to live and repair itself even after the worst tragedies, its resilience so unlike the temporal body which it inhabits. Even after Mrs Yamada's husband died, she and her mother-in-law continued to find happiness around them—in their music and their garden and the old letters of the man they loved, and in the unwavering support of one another's companionship.

The same could not be said for B and his wounded pride. The humiliation Asato had caused him with his confession was a betrayal that could not be forgiven. In the Confucian code of conduct that school children everywhere cling to perhaps strongest of all, it was the worst sin that Asato could commit, and B would not let him forget it. Nor would he let such an offense slide so easily. He ostracized Asato with a look, and turned his other followers against him with meaningful whispers between class periods—but that was only for starters.

The tension was bound to come to a head, and one day not long after Asato's confession it did. B and his companions were waiting for Asato on his way home from school when they stepped in front of him on the road, blocking his way, just as they did to catch the girls whose hair they pulled.

Asato slowed to a stop. And for the first time since he could remember, he found himself instilled with a genuine fear of physical pain.

"There he is," B boasted to his friends as he stood between them with his hands in his pockets. "There's the tattle-tale traitor."

The dirty, stinking rat-traitor, his friends laughed and nudged one another. It was obvious they had been waiting since Asato's first day of school for this. Nobody broke his promises and turned on his friend like that, they said, especially when that friend was someone as magnanimous as B. Someone who did that to his own buddies . . . well, he was no one anyone wanted as a friend of theirs.

"So what d'you think we oughtta do about it?" B asked his friends, and despite their supposed suffering there were grins on all their faces. "We can't let him get away with something like this. Traitors're the worst of the worst. We can't let them go unpunished, now, can we?"

Hell no! came the chorus of shouts. What would become of the world order if something like that were allowed?

B's lips curled up in a snarl. "Besides," he said as he glowered down at Asato, "he ruined everything, that little bastard. It's all thanks to him y'all got beat and made to shovel out shit. Thanks to him Ms Yamada ain't speaking to me no more. He turned her against us—"

"That's not true!" Asato said. "She didn't even know who you were."

B bristled at that. "Shut the hell up!" he said, and raised one fist before Asato's face. "What would you know about it? You're just a good for nothing, fatherless son of a tramp—"

"You shut up about my mother!" Asato yelled, and B grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled hard.

The other boys cheered raucously at that, and Asato winced, feeling tears come to his eyes that he tried to blink back. It was not just the stinging in his scalp that hurt him so. Through the roar of the others' laughter he caught their insults, their mocking whines as they imitated his whimpers, and he knew that in their eyes he had been downgraded to the worth of those girls whose hair they pulled for fun, if not lower yet. He hadn't realized it before, but they had probably hated those girls as much as they hated him right now.

It wasn't fair. This wasn't the way the world was supposed to work. Telling the truth and living a clean life were supposed to be rewarded, not stomped on and punished by overwhelming strength and cruelty. As Asato fell to one knee in the dusty road he felt that world view to which he had clung so desperately slowly shattering all around him, dissipating in the dry air like the dirt they all kicked up so that he could not pull its pieces back together.

And through their taunts B's cold voice came to him clear as a bell as he said, "Oh? What're you gonna do about it?" He was on top of Asato, holding the younger boy down as he struggled to get away without pulling out his own hair in the process. Asato felt B's elbows digging into his back as he pouted, "You gonna go tell your mommy? You gonna go tell your big sister?"

Asato gritted his teeth. He hated the way B talked about his mother and Ruka. He hated it more than anything, and always had hated it. That tongue of flame that had flared up and flickered inside him in the Yamadas' home returned, but now he felt it like a material thing, growing and expanding within his body so fast and fiery hot it threatened to burst right through his skin. He screamed. That relieved the pressure, but the thing remained insatiable. B's stomach was right over his head, pushing it down to face the dirt, when Asato bucked forward and butted his head right into it, knocking B over.

He felt more than heard the air leave B's lungs. Then he lost his balance, there was a solid _thuck_ like the figurine had made falling on the tatami only reverberating throughout his body, and the next thing he knew he was sprawled across B on the ground. It was only a moment before Asato was pushing himself to his knees; and seeing B on his back in the dirt trying to catch his breath under Asato's weight brought that fiery thing right to the surface again.

"I wish you would just die and leave me alone!" he shouted, as he began hitting B's arms that the older boy had brought up to defend himself. "We'd all be better off if you were dead!"

Little did he know that those words, spoken by children everywhere to no ill effect, would change his life completely.

There was a stunned pause among the other boys, almost as though they felt something ominous pass among them in the air with Asato's outburst. But that feeling passed quickly, and as boys are wont to do, they began to tease him anew for thinking such a thing would scare them—covering for the fact that, for a brief moment, it had. They pulled Asato off of B, grabbing fistfuls of his clothes and pulling every which way until the stitches of his sleeves began to rip. Asato looked to B for help, even though it had been B he wished dead; but this time B would not oblige him. He merely sneered as he got to his feet, wiping the saliva from his cheek with the back of his hand, and the look that was in his once kind eyes seemed to Asato to pledge nothing less than murder.

It was the last thing he would ever see on B's face again as he shrugged out of the other boys' grasps and took off in a sprint. All the way home, Asato could hardly believe there had ever been a time he would have done anything to gain that boy's love and acceptance.

—

At first Asato thought it was probably just a coincidence that B did not show up for class the next day. But when he soon learned that B had passed away during the night, Asato could not get the thought that he must have caused it out of his head.

There was no way Asato or any of the others could have known what killed B so suddenly and silently. But to all the boys who had witnessed the fight the afternoon before, there was no doubt something more mysterious and far more sinister than any natural ailment was responsible, and for this they could think of no one better to blame than Asato.

Fresh in their minds were his last words to B the day before: how Asato had said he wished B were dead. And, lo and behold, not even a day later that was how he wound up. Such perfect timing could not be ignored. Asato must have done some voodoo to kill B in his sleep, they were convinced, or perhaps it was on the very road itself that he had cursed B and cut short his young life. They did not bother to hide their suspicions and their contempt from Asato as they whispered such things among themselves in class and stared at him across the aisles. Not only was he a traitor, they said, but he was a murderer as well. Poor B . . . to think he had trusted Asato enough to bring him into their fold, never even suspecting that that boy could be a villain in disguise.

No, not a villain. A monster. There was no other word to describe something like Asato. No ordinary human being was capable of what black magic he must have used to kill B. Only a monster could do such a thing—a demon, just like they had said from the beginning, that should never have been brought into existence.

Their words cut to Asato's heart. As he scrunched up his body behind his desk and tried in vain to concentrate on his teacher's words instead of theirs, he had to wonder: was there some truth to what they said? He couldn't remember doing anything in particular to hurt B, other than trying to hit him the afternoon before, but he couldn't have hurt him that bad, could he? Yes, he was glad that B was gone from his life for good, but did that make him a monster?

Maybe it did, he thought. After all, B had said so many cruel things to him, but he had never once said he wished Asato would die and leave _him_ alone.

They would be waiting for him on his way home again for sure, Asato knew. Surely the boys who had honestly considered B a friend would never forgive him for what he had done, even though he himself wasn't sure how he could have done it. He took a longer way home that skirted around the town and took him out by the rice fields; but somehow the boys found him. At the sight of them Asato broke into a run. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, to the point they felt like they would fall off, but the older boys with their longer strides were soon catching up, their voices always sounding like they were right behind. And when they did catch him . . .

Help me, Asato prayed in his heart to no one in particular. Don't let them get a hold of me. Because when they do . . . _when they do . . ._

Something went flying past his ear to land ahead of his stride in the soft soil with a dull plop. He thought nothing of it, until another such something hit him in the shoulder. It stung. Rocks, he realized. The boys were throwing rocks at him. He tried to run faster, but they were so close now he could hear their shouts to one another to catch the monster, the demon—don't let him get away—make him pay for what he did to B—make him wish he had never been born. They were going to kill him. Asato was sure of it. If they didn't catch him and rip him apart, they would stone him to death first. Their rocks kept flying through the air around him like a meteor shower, smacking into his back and legs and head. Asato didn't think anything could hurt as much as that.

His foot fell into a divot in the soil and he pitched forward face-first onto the ground. The moment he felt himself falling he knew it was all over. As he lay still trying to catch his breath, he knew he couldn't run any more, his legs hurt so bad from the strain and from being bruised by the thrown rocks. The rich smell of dirt was strong in his nostrils and he dug his fingers into it, wishing that the earth and the tall grasses of this field might just absorb him at that very moment and take him away from his pain, and from the boys who he knew must be right behind him. "Help me," he muttered into the ground, giving voice to the words that had been repeating themselves in his head with each footfall. "Someone, please, help me. Get me out of here." Anywhere else but here. . . .

Though he was expecting it at any moment, the first blow still took him by surprise. And it proved to him that something could indeed feel worse than being pelted by rocks. So much worse. While Asato was closing his eyes and pressing himself to the ground, the first boy to arrive kicked him in the side. The shock knocked the breath out of Asato and he curled up on his side, holding his gut. Opening his eyes, he watched the feet of the older boys surround him. He hardly had the time or strength or desire to look up into their faces, let alone past waist level, for he already knew what he would find on those faces: cruel grins of triumph, snarls of disgust, vengeful sneers. . . . Those images remained imprinted in sharp relief into his mind from before. Those who still had rocks in their hands threw them down at him point-blank, some hitting the side of Asato's face where he felt warm blood start to trickle down his skin. When they ran out of rocks they used their fists and their feet, punching and kicking him wherever they could, pulling his hair and spitting on his face and his Western clothes.

There was no way Asato could have fought them all off even if he had had the strength to fight back, and no doubt that was their intent in attacking as a pack. If he had killed a boy like B so easily, they were not about to take any chances. Behind their blows was a fear that was barely tangible. Their voices all ran together with the sounds of shoes scuffing the dirt and connecting with his body, but every now and then Asato could make out the same key words: Monster. Demon. We'll make him pay. We'll make him wish he was never born. Asato couldn't be sure which truly hurt more, the physical blows or those words.

He wasn't sure when he had started sobbing, nor when he had started apologizing for killing B. Only that they went on beating him for what seemed like forever; and when they grew tired of that and their blows became weaker, and Asato thought they might finally be finished with him, they urinated on him for good measure. He shielded his face with his arms, but that was little protection. The warm urine soaked his clothes and his hair and steamed in the autumn air; its acrid, ammoniac smell choked him. The older boys laughed at his sobs and his vain attempts to protect himself. That would teach him, they said. It was only what someone like him deserved, they said—and part of Asato couldn't help but believe it.

When they finally left him alone, Asato allowed himself to cry in earnest. Alone in the field and sheltered from view by the tall grass, there was no one to hear him, nor to see him in that shameful state. Each hitched breath ached, which only prompted another. Even his unique body was helpless against all that the boys had done; and truth be told, they probably would have beaten him within an inch of his life if it were not for that unique gift. But even that was just another reminder of how different he was from the other boys—how inhuman he was. That all that they had done was not nearly enough to kill him and end his misery for good.

The sky had begun to darken by the time he managed to drag himself home. His sister was waiting for him when he did return; and though his clothes were damp and he smelled horribly of urine and dirt and dried blood, Ruka put her arms around him and gingerly helped him inside. She bid him to lie down as she went and fetched a basin of water, and helped him undress in the bathroom when his sore muscles made him seize up.

As she did her best to scrub the dirt and filth from his body, Asato was suddenly so moved by her kindness and how sharp its contrast to all that had befallen him that day that he could not hold back his tears. They fell silently onto his knees, but Ruka who was at his back noticed them nonetheless and embraced him from behind, leaning him back against her breast even though the soapy water on his back would soak her kimono. She held him tightly like that, whispering into his ear that everything would be all right as the palm of her small hand gently tapped his chest over his heart, as though to make sure it kept its tempo. In contrast to the bitter stench of his clothes that lay in a rumpled pile in the corner, the fresh scent on her skin and clothes were to him the purest, most beautiful scent he had ever known, like the first faint whiff of plum blossoms on a clear winter day. To Asato it seemed as though not even the bodhisattva themselves could smell more wonderful than his sister.

But such kindness was surely more than he deserved.

"Ruka," he started carefully as she held him, "is it true I'm a demon?"

Her hand went still for just a moment. "Whatever would make you say such a thing?"

"The boys at school say I'm a monster," he sobbed. "They say only a monster could have made B die the way he did. And I don't know how I did it, but I must have killed him, so that means . . . that means I . . ."

He trailed off and could say no more as Ruka shushed him tenderly, like a mother does her child. Her selflessness pierced his heart, and he felt such love for her in that moment he thought he might die. Even if it was a different kind of pain from those of his injuries, it hurt just as much. "You're not like that at all, Asato," she said, and it sounded to his own ears that she must have been holding back tears as well as she did so. "You're not a monster."

Her weight at his back was his only comfort, his only anchor keeping him steady. "I'm not?"

"No, you're not. You're as human as I am. Without a doubt. I guarantee it."

—

That was not the last time Asato received a beating from the older boys, nor was it the last time they threatened to extinguish him completely. But at the same time it was apparent that though they could hurt him and humiliate him as a pack just fine, they were afraid to be caught with him as individuals, as though they still feared that he might magically do to them what they were sure he did to B: he had only to single them out first. No one had forgotten his final outburst against B.

When they were not actively taking out their fear and disgust on Asato, the older boys simply scorned him and gave him a wide berth on school grounds. Gradually it caught on among the other students as well, who would pass him with wary gazes and chide others aloud who did not seem to realize Asato's toxicity and interacted with him carelessly. At first glance, such behavior would make an outsider suspect it was done in youthful exaggeration, which makes mountains out of the smallest anthills, and all the more so when its target is one so meek and harmless to look at him. Asato and the other students knew better, however: theirs was a genuine disgust, for in their eyes Asato did indeed represent something dangerous and inhuman.

As a result it seemed that Asato was damned to remain an outcast. Either he was isolated by the efforts of B's friends who had never liked him to begin with and now had new fuel for their hatred; or else by his own sins perpetrated when he ran with B's company, unforgiven by the girls whose hair he had pulled and the classmates he had allowed to be harassed by that older boy with silent indifference.

So when he witnessed B's old posse berating a couple of brothers in the schoolyard, he saw it as an opportunity to redeem himself. The older boys demanded the brothers' lunches, and then when they had received them threw the food down on the ground and called it tainted and an insult to them, just as the mere sight of the two brothers in their school was an affront to them. They called the brothers _eta_ and nonhumans whose dirty brown rice wouldn't even be fit for their dogs.

Asato might have been young but he was not ignorant about such things. When he had first come home asking about this word "eta" that he had heard in town, his mother had patiently explained to him how there was a class of people that were considered untouchables in the old social system, whose professions made them unclean—"But that was in the old days. In this era you can hardly tell the difference between someone from an untouchable family and someone from a normal family anymore, so what does it really matter?" Asato couldn't tell the difference either. The older boys called the brothers dirty and treated them like they were subhuman, but to Asato they looked no different than himself or any of the other students. There was no reason as far as he could see for such abuse.

Asato sympathized with the brothers, who were being harassed for no other reason than simply existing. Their plight reminded him of his own; he would be a coward and a hypocrite if he did not stand up for them when he had wished on so many occasions lately that someone would intervene on his behalf. But he could not deny that he had other motivations as well.

He charged the group of older boys and ran right into them, shoving them away from the two young brothers. The boys Asato had touched jumped back so suddenly it was as though they had been shocked, and their companions recoiled in horror lest Asato do the same thing to them. "Leave them alone!" Asato screamed at the older boys. "What'd they ever do to you? They can't help what they are!"

The older boys laughed at that, but their grins were brittle. "Look who thinks he's a tough guy now," said one, putting his hands on his hips and towering over Asato, while another said, "Just what're you gonna do about it? You think those animals—" He nodded in the bothers' direction. "—are worth getting the snot beat outta you over?"

Asato bristled at that. The boy might as well have called him an animal, it wounded him like a fist right in the gut. He could feel the angry thing growing inside his body again, and he said the first thing to come to mind: "I'll put a curse on every last one of you! I mean it!"

Yeah, sure he would. The boys snorted and laughed even harder at that. A couple pretended to be so frightened they were trembling, whining "Don't hurt me" in obnoxious voices. They jabbed him in the shoulder, saying, "Go on, then. You think you're so awful, go on and do it."

They made Asato so sick, he clenched his fists and growled at the boys. He couldn't be sure if it was he who had done it or the thing inside, that seemed to be crouching deep down like a beast ready to pounce; but the older boys must have caught a glimpse of the thing beneath his surface as well, because all of a sudden their mirth died completely, and looks of genuine horror replaced the grins and sneers on all their faces. They turned and ran. He could hear a few of the bolder ones nervously laughing the whole thing off, but even that could not hide the fact that he had frightened them. Not one of them had not feared for that second that Asato might at the slightest encouragement have sent him to join B.

The brothers had been at his back and could not have seen whatever had caused the others' alarm; but nevertheless when he turned to them with a kind smile, the older brother, who at this time was about Asato's age, grabbed the arm of the younger and automatically took a step back. When Asato asked if they were all right, they started and could only manage to nod vaguely.

Asato looked down at the handkerchiefs lying soiled on the ground and the rice balls that had tumbled out of them into the dirt. "I'm sorry they ruined your lunch," he said to the two boys, "but I'll share mine with you if you'd like. It isn't much but—"

The older brother shook his head violently and took another step back. "We're fine!"

At the harsh sound of his voice, his younger brother looked as though he were about to cry.

"All right," Asato said slowly. He bent down and picked up the handkerchiefs and shook off the clumps of dirt. The two boys must still be shaken up by the others' bullying, he thought; but now that he had saved them from it, surely they would be grateful to him, right? It was not as though the two eta boys had any other friends in the school. As far as Asato was concerned, they were in the same boat. Didn't that obligate them to stick together? "Hey," he said as he held out the handkerchiefs to return them to the boys, "maybe you and I can be friends. I don't think you're different from anyone else at all."

He thought it might make the boys feel better to hear that, but apparently they did not share his opinion. The younger brother automatically reached out to take back his handkerchief, but his older brother grabbed his wrist before he could do so and pulled him away.

"Wait a minute—" Asato started after them, but the older brother rounded on him with tears in his eyes.

"Keep away from us!" he yelled at Asato. "I'd rather be a nonhuman animal than a demon like you!"

And he ran with his brother in tow for the shelter of the school building, leaving Asato alone in the center of the yard with those words. They continued to buzz inside his mind, pricking him again and again like a swarm of angry bees.

No, I'm not a demon! Asato wanted to scream back at him. Ruka promised I'm not! But even that small bit of reassurance had only a temporary effect, before the voice of doubt in his mind resurfaced.

—

Asato took the handkerchiefs home and washed them until they were like new. He took them back to school to return to the eta boys whose mother would probably be upset to have such things go to waste, the thought of asking for any compassion in return not even crossing his mind. But the brothers continued to refuse them day after day, until one morning Asato left the handkerchiefs on the older brother's desk. When he walked by later and saw them missing, he was pleased that finally he had been allowed to do something kind for them; but on his way out the door he recognized the pattern of one of the handkerchiefs hanging over the side of the wastebasket. Apparently even the eta brothers thought them polluted beyond redemption by his demon hands.

Thus Asato was alone again, and the despair he had believed so utterly unbearable when he first came to the school seemed like a fond dream in comparison. He would have given nearly anything to become that target of quiet ridicule and curiosity once again, rather than live with the constant oppressive weight of knowing, in everyone else's eyes, his entire existence was an abomination.

Only the adults in town and animals remained warm to him as they always had, drawn to his compassionate spirit, the latter probably empathizing with him as well: they knew what it was like to be downtrodden, at the mercy of the cruel. But what petty consolation that was, when compassion was worth less than a grain of rice in the schoolyard.

The older boys lost interest in beating Asato after a while. The resentment and fear they had naturally felt after B's death had long since dissipated into a general and steady disgust for him. He was an easy target, and one they felt they had a duty to keep in line every once in a while with physical reminders that no matter what dark powers he possessed, they were still stronger and would not run away in fear of a boy a year or more their junior. If they wanted his lunch or his money, they got it; and if they wanted the thrill of pushing him around a little, they went ahead and pushed him around. It was useless to stand up for oneself against such a regime.

Asato's mother knew that well. When he came home with soiled shirts and trousers ripped at the knee from falls along the road, she cleaned and mended them without a word, only sorrowfully watching the needle thread up and down through the fabric. There was nothing she could do, and that made Asato angry, even though he knew it was true. Mothers were supposed to protect their children, weren't they?

Perhaps it was hypocritical of him, but he did not blame Ruka the same way. He did not want her becoming involved in the boys' affairs, becoming another precious thing Asato doubted his ability to protect, and was more ashamed than anything that he could not protect himself and be as strong for her as he wanted to be. When he came home bruised and dirty and tired, she would put her arms around him and draw him a bath or fix him a steaming bowl of soup. Perhaps her efforts to comfort him would have been deemed too bold by their society in that day, even for a sibling; but more than anything—even more than it embarrassed him to know that—Asato craved the warm embrace of his sister's arms that held him to her body, and her gentle caresses against his hair. She alone was his salvation, reassuring him that all would be right in the end. If he would just endure.

Endure. That was the key word, that could arouse such hope and such frustration simultaneously. The good, like the love he and Ruka had for one another, would triumph when all was said and done, she said; while cruelty would only beget cruelty upon the wicked. This truth, whispered in his ear with Ruka's soft breath as they lay next to each other at night, warmed Asato's body more thoroughly than any bath or bowl of soup could.

Yet somehow, those were some of the times when he wished the hardest he could rid himself of all who abused him.

—

One afternoon, when summer had come again, as he was hanging his head and walking down the road toward home after being pushed to the ground by the older boys, Asato walked headlong into a person coming the other way for the first time that he could remember.

He caught a glimpse of a gray linen three-piece suit before he bowed his head and apologized.

"That's all right, young man," the man said with an airy chuckle that Asato could tell at once was sincere. "I should have been more careful and realized you really weren't watching where you were going."

Asato blushed; but when he looked up and saw the smile on the man's face his embarrassment vanished with the throbbing in his knees and palms and rump. The man standing before him was not particularly tall or short, nor skinny nor fat, but looked to be pushing sixty years old by the lines in his face and his short gray hair that was slicked back. His was a kindly face that took easily to his smile, and looked as though it had been lined by laughter rather than hardship. The glasses he wore gave him an air of intelligence along with his pressed suit and leather shoes, now covered with a fine layer of dust from the dry dirt road. "I know when I was your age," he began again, "there was always some daydream or another preoccupying my thoughts, and leading me far from the direction I was meaning to go."

"I wasn't daydreaming, sir," Asato said.

"Oh, you weren't?" The man looked over Asato's figure, noting the scrapes on his hands and bare knees. "No, I guess you weren't," he agreed more solemnly. But it was something in Asato's manner, as though he were agonizing over whether to say more, that made the man stop instead of moving on and say: "Maybe I should take a look at those scrapes for you. You wouldn't want them to become infected."

"Don't worry about it. It's nothing," Asato started.

But the man would hear nothing of it. "Maybe they feel like nothing, but what about the cuts no one can see, the ones inside? If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that those particular cuts won't go away without the proper treatment." Asato looked up at that, for it seemed as though the man could see right into his heart. He smiled again. "Come on. You can tell me what happened at my clinic just up the way there."

"Your clinic. Is that like a hospital?"

"Well . . ." The man laughed. "It's not really my clinic, per se. _That_ is in the city, where I live. But while I'm here visiting my family they let me use it as such."

"Then you're a doctor!"

The man slapped his forehead. "Where are my manners?" he said to himself. Then to Asato: "Yes, I am. They call me Dr H around here. And what should I call you, young man?"

"My name's Tsuzuki Asato," Asato said, and the man put out his hand.

"Well, Tsuzuki," he said as they shook, "it's a pleasure to meet you."

That was the first time anyone had ever called Asato Tsuzuki aside from his teacher; but that hardly counted, seeing as how every time the teacher called him that it felt like the name of that man who had been Ruka's father but had passed before Asato was born. But when Dr H called him Tsuzuki, it felt for the first time like his own name, and that was a wonderful feeling indeed.

The two walked up the road a little ways and presently came to a small Western cottage with a gate around one side and roses blooming in the yard. There were all types and colors of roses, from bushes to vines that crawled up the fence and trellises on the side of the house, delicate tea roses to huge grandifloras, from bright red and pink and orange to pale yellow and the clearest white. Each one had its place and was blooming magnificently. Asato thought he could smell them long before they reached the front gate.

Dr H showed him inside out of the sun, and Asato waited in the parlor while the doctor poured him a glass of cool water with lemon in the kitchen. While Asato drank, thinking he had never drunk anything so sweet, Dr H cleaned up the scrapes and bruises on his legs and hummed to himself every once in a while. The windows were open to let in the breeze, and from outside the droning of a dragonfly cruising by or a bumblebee visiting the roses interrupted the steady chirping of the cicadas that filled the summer air.

After a while, Dr H said, "I guess you were right. These bumps and scrapes will heal in no time."

As though to speed up the process, Asato rubbed the raw patch on the heel of one hand. "I've always been a quick healer."

"Yes, I can see that."

Dr H did not say anything more than that, but the weight of his silence seemed to be implying something more, prying the truth slowly out of the bottom of Asato's heart like a pump gradually sucking water up out of the ground.

"They say I'm a demon," he confessed suddenly. "A monster who needs to be punished. That's why they pushed me. . . . But they're not that bad, really, the other boys—at least, not anymore—"

"They're bad enough," said Dr H, stunned that he would say such a thing in their defense. "Calling you a demon—where would they even get an idea like that?"

"It's my eyes, sir. They're not like everybody else's. Their color is weird. Everyone says only demons have eyes that color."

"Let me see," said Dr H; and Asato leaned forward and opened his eyes to the ceiling so that he could get a good look. The doctor tilted his face toward the light, frowned, and tilted it back. "Ah . . ." he said to himself, and Asato thought he would die of impatience to know what the doctor was seeing. Finally, the verdict: "They look normal to me. Yep, perfectly human eyes, all right."

"But they're purple."

"So they are. But that isn't completely unheard of."

"It isn't?" Asato could hardly believe his ears.

But Dr H did not answer. Instead he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again his expression was graver than any Asato had yet seen. It made his face, which seemed crafted for and by geniality, appear quite sad and tired. "Don't get me wrong, Tsuzuki," he began again; "I do think demons exist. In fact, I'd bet my life on it. But it's not the color of a person's eyes that determines their nature: it's the color of their heart."

When Tsuzuki put his hand to his chest, the doctor shook his head. "No, I don't mean the literal color." He sighed, but not in exasperation. "What I mean is, there is a darkness in the human heart that is like a demon. No one knows where it comes from, and not everyone has it. Even among those who do, most have it just a little bit and keep it concealed deep within themselves their whole lives.

"But others are not so careful. Those who desire to hurt others, who punish the weak just for being what they are, who can't stand happiness and feel like they have to destroy it—theirs is a demonic way of thinking, Tsuzuki. It is a way of thinking that is against society, because such a society as that would quickly cease to function. Does that make sense to you?"

Asato nodded slowly. What the doctor said sounded a lot like Ruka's command to endure, endure in goodness. Only the words used to explain it were different.

Yet his thoughts could not help returning to the anger he had felt before at her words, and how he would wish at those times that those who were cruel to him would be wiped off the face of the earth. That wish was a product of the dark thing he felt inside him. So by the doctor's definition, didn't that mean there was in fact a demon inside his self?

Dr H must have realized by the expression on Asato's face that his words had not exactly come as the reassurance he had thought they would be. "Well," he said with an apologetic smile, "maybe that's something you only come to understand when you get older. When you've seen as many different kinds of characters as I have in my profession, you can't help but notice the shades that exist in the human soul just that much more."

—

But Asato thought he understood perfectly.

It did take some getting used to, to think that in his nature was the kernel of something demonic. Yet, somehow, over time it was a thought that actually gave him hope, because, as Dr H had said, he was not powerless, not at the mercy of that dark spot within him, but a rational human being who had the ability to control it and suppress it, surround it with love and compassion as one surrounded the roots of a plant with soil and mulch. In time, maybe even that darkness could end up producing something wonderful, like the ugly, thorny stems of the rose bushes that nonetheless produced such beautiful flowers.

Those rose bushes in the yard of Dr H's house became symbols of inspiration to Asato, as well as fascination. After just that first accidental meeting, he found himself drawn to Dr H and all those things that surrounded him. Perhaps part of it was compensation: Asato had no male role models in his life and, barring the father of his imagination, never had—with the possible exception of B, but that had been nothing more than a painful delusion from the beginning—so perhaps it could be said that he naturally gravitated toward the doctor's nurturing personality which made him a grandfatherly figure in Asato's mind. Maybe it was not even a stretch to call him a fatherly figure. Asato craved his support and his wisdom about all manner of things, from the nature of the human heart to the nature of plants and insects, and the careful balance that existed between them; and Dr H encouraged him in his studies and spoiled him with Western sweets made by his daughter the likes of which Asato had never before imagined. A well-mannered young man like him was, after all, entitled to experience all the good things childhood had to offer, whether his eyes were brown or purple or something else entirely.

In his small house-cum-country clinic, Dr H had a gramophone not unlike the Yamadas', with a large horn that was scalloped to resemble the petals of a morning glory. Sometimes he would be playing one of his German records when Asato came over, and in the middle of their conversation over their tea and pie the doctor would inexplicably close his eyes and slightly bob his head to the strains of music that flowed out from the horn and filled the room, as though the melody were magically taking him back to some other place and time. The smile on his face took on a melancholy quality at those times that sparked in Asato a strange jealousy. No matter how much of his own heart he poured out to the doctor, there remained something of Dr H that he was never privy to.

It made him want to cling to that man as though he were his own father and beg him not to go and leave him alone again, though he could never be sure why that thought would spring to his mind or just where he thought Dr H was going. Only that, like the warmth of summer that each child knows is all too fleeting, he could not shake the feeling that this too was only temporary.

However, that fear he had convinced himself was so irrational one day turned out to be justified. When he arrived at the cottage one afternoon toward the end of summer, he found Dr H, and his gramophone, gone. The only trace of the elderly man that seemed to remain was his roses, blooming on oblivious to his absence.

Convincing himself that it was just in case, that there was some possibility however slight of the doctor's return, Asato waited on the front step until the sun hung low in the sky. It was about that time that he spotted a woman coming up the road. He thought she must have been taking a long way into town until she reached the gate. "Are you Tsuzuki?" she asked him.

He jumped up from the step at that. The woman was about his mother's age, and wore her kimono sleeves tied up and a handkerchief over her hair as though she had just been out in the fields. It took a moment before he recognized the similarities and understood that she was Dr H's daughter, the one who had baked those wonderful sweets the two of them had shared over the summer months.

"Father asked me to give this to you," she told him, and held a small envelope out to him, like the kind that held money and were given to children at the new year.

But it did not hold money. Inside was a simple white card that had written on it the doctor's name and the address of his clinic in the city: in case Asato was ever in Tokyo.

—

Insufferable years somehow passed in the small town after that. And then one day Asato's mother told him they were moving back to their old house in the city, the house where he and Ruka had been born. He remembered the city, in vague bits and pieces he could never be sure were actual memories and not dreams. He remembered paved streets and humming electrical wires criss-crossing the air above his head, and a general sense of order that distinctly lacked the smell of dirt that pervaded the country. His mother's reasons for moving were vague and practical, just as her reasons for moving out of the city had been, but Asato was relieved to get away from the painful memories this small town held for him, and start his school life anew in the big city.

The year was 1911; and it was not uncommon in the city to see young men and women in Western dress, or to see gentlemen walking down the street in _hakama_ and _haori_ and top hats. Technology was all around, even in the air; one could actually smell the signs of progress on an oppressive summer day. The buildings were close and dark, a comforting press of society all around Asato that would not allow him to wallow in loneliness. All the wonders of the world were at his fingertips in the local market, where even the sweets Dr H's daughter had made from scratch were easily available for purchase; where a person could catch a whiff of Italian meatballs as readily as fried noodles, and hear languages other than Japanese spoken by people passing by.

Even if daily life in Asato's neighborhood were not so exciting as that, everything about it nevertheless had the crisp clarity of newness. He was able to start classes with a clean slate—where nobody knew that he might have killed a boy, or thought to call him a demon because of his eyes. He was in the fifth grade now, and fifth graders saw themselves as more mature than that.

The only reason Asato's classmates had to tease him was when he missed the answer to an easy question, or said something preposterous when called upon. But the sound of their laughter was different from the laughter of the boys at his old school. These students' laughter did not come with derision: they found Asato amusing in a charming sort of way, and thought that he was trying to make them laugh, when in fact it was they who had discovered in him a sense of humor Asato had never known he had. It was a sense of humor that was all too easy to embrace, as it signaled to him acceptance among his peers, even if it was an acceptance that came with its own species of distance. When he made them laugh it was as though they were his friends in that brief interlude, and that was enough to content him. If it had a negative effect on his grades—well, that was the lot of the jester, an acceptable trade-off for the illusion of belonging.

But like a clown who hides his troubles behind a painted-on smile, if changes at school were easy to grow accustomed to, the same could not be said for changes at home. Ruka was about to turn eighteen; and with no prospects for college, whether financially or academically, there was not much of a future for a young woman such as herself other than to find a nice young man with a steady paycheck and settle down to start a family of her own. Each time that line of conversation came up among company, Ruka's expression would grow solemn and dark, and she would lower her eyes as though in mourning for her future self. It became such a conditioned response, Asato had merely to see that look to know when she was worrying about it, even when no one had said anything to prompt her response.

She confessed to Asato once the confused state of her emotions on the issue. On the one hand, she wasn't sure any young man would want to make her his wife. It was not as though she were particularly beautiful or useful, she said, and she had always been shy talking to boys. To Asato, however, this could not be farther from the truth, which he told her openly. Not only was she a skilled cook and seamstress, he said, but she was so stunning and charming any man would have to feel privileged to call her his wife. She would just chuckle at that and say little brothers were supposed to say such things; but Asato had witnessed the gazes of men turning her way himself—even if he did not always tell her this—and knew for a fact that no woman passed through his own judgment without first being held up next to Ruka.

But she could only laugh off so much of his flattery before she sobered and bit her lip. "But what if _I_ don't want a husband?" she would ask quietly, and say no more on the subject, just leave her inexplicable fear hanging in the air between them, an invisible barrier through which Asato could not reach to comfort her.

Not long after the three of them had moved into their old home, Ruka left Asato to live alone with their mother. In place of higher education, his mother told him, his older sister had decided to find work and board within the city, but this did not explain why Ruka had left with so little warning. She must be ashamed, Asato thought, if she could not tell me where she was going or why she had to leave so suddenly. I can't blame her; I would probably do the same thing if our situations had been reversed. He came to understand that his older sister saw her new path in life as a matter of family duty, as she tried to explain in her polite, round-about way in her weekly letters home that also contained a portion of her wages. Sending home this small amount of money from her hard work was her way of supporting their mother and Asato, so that when he finished public school he could attend college and make something of himself, and redeem their family from being in the government's debt. Knowing this at once made Asato fiercely proud of his sister, who continued to sacrifice so much for him, and severely guilty, for what a heavy burden of expectation had now been placed on his shoulders because of her decision. And with each month that passed with her agonizing absence, lesson work felt more and more like an unbearable chore.

Asato missed his sister very much. He told himself that if he only knew where she was—he wouldn't even have to go see her—his heart would be at ease; but all she would tell him in her letters was that she was working as a seamstress, and surely there were too many tailors in the city to narrow down. Ruka seemed reluctant to give him specifics, as though she were afraid he really would come visit her at her work, which Asato could not understand for the life of him. How could he ever be ashamed of his beloved sister? In his eyes, everything she did was perfection.

Even the way she was cruel enough to leave him without even the slightest thing from which he might take comfort was absolute and stunning. They said if one yearned for his true love hard enough, he would be able to fly to that person and meet them in his dreams; but even in slumber he remained lonely for her supporting presence, the image of her beautiful face. The only trace of her she allowed to comfort him where those material letters, on which Asato imagined he could smell the fresh scent of Ruka's skin. Perhaps even that was an illusion; but if that were the case, it was much better to have the illusion than to have nothing at all.

It was in this loneliness Ruka left him in, that even his schoolyard companions were useless to cure, that Asato's thoughts returned to the small town in which they three had at least been together; and he found himself craving the earthy smell that was so rarely caught in the city limits. Of all things that reminded him of that town, that was perhaps what he missed the most.

And he remembered the card Dr H had left for him, and the Tokyo address that was inscribed on it.

—

Dr H's clinic was farther away than Asato had imagined. Then again, Tokyo was a vast place, and it should have come as no surprise that there could be places within it that were half a day's walk or more away. Asato did not have the money for cab fare for that distance, let alone money for a bicycle. But a high school boy who lived down the street was kind enough to lend Asato his—once he had taught him how to ride. He would be getting a new one when he went off to college anyway, he said, after which time Asato was welcome to his old thing. His neighbor might have downplayed the whole transaction—Asato was still too small to ride it properly, he said apologetically—but Asato could think of few gestures more generous; he was indebted, after all, and he thoroughly embarrassed the high school boy with his display gratitude.

Only a couple of years had passed since Asato last saw Dr H, but to him that time had seemed like an eternity. He couldn't be sure the doctor would still recognize him given that he had grown since then, or that Asato would still be welcomed into his life.

In truth, though, he had little to worry about.

He found Dr H pruning the roses outside his office when he pulled up to the building on the borrowed bicycle. Dr H looked up and immediately recognized Asato, waving and shouting to him, "Well well, if it isn't Tsuzuki! What brings you here, young man?"

"Wouldn't you know it, I'm living in Tokyo now." Asato could not keep the grin from his lips if he tried with all his might. He told Dr H where his house was located, and the elderly man's eyes widened. "You rode all the way here?" he asked in admiring surprise.

Then as though he had just remembered something, he put down his shears and pulled off his gloves in a hurry, and beckoned to Asato to follow him, saying with a mysterious wink, "I want to show you something."

He led Asato around the side of the building, where he opened his arms wide and said, "Well? Isn't she gorgeous?"

Asato had seen automobiles in town before on occasion, but he had never seen one as close up as this, nor had he ever known anyone who actually owned one. Standing beside the curb was a brand-new and fresh-off-the-boat 1911 Haynes Model 20 touring car, with a 35-horsepower engine and collapsible canopy and room enough for five, magnificent in its glistening black paint and polished chrome that sparkled in the sunlight. Asato had never seen a more beautiful piece of machinery—it was like a work of art. The doctor was probably the first person in Japan to have one, and not for the first time Asato felt privileged to be considered the elderly man's friend. "It's amazing!" was all the could think of to say.

Dr H chuckled at that. Then he said, "Why don't you try it out."

Asato started. Was that really all right?

"Go on. Get in," Dr H said when he saw Asato's hesitation. "A modern boy should know his automobiles."

Though he was nearly bursting with eagerness to do so, Asato climbed carefully into the driver's seat. As he grabbed the steering wheel in both hands and looked around himself, taking in the view from behind the wheel, Dr H eased the door closed and folded his arms on top of it. "What do you think?" he asked Asato.

"I think it's incredible! How fast does it go?"

Dr H laughed. He tilted his head and answered, "Fast enough. I'll give you a ride in it sometime if you like."

"Would I!" Asato realized a little late that he had forgotten his manners; but with Dr H it hardly seemed to matter. His dark eyes were sparkling with as much wonder as Asato felt as he fondly caressed the hood as one might his most beloved horse. He was only too happy to share in Asato's every new discovery.

After some time with the automobile the two returned to the rose bushes, where Dr H finished his pruning while he asked Asato about his new life in the city. At one point he stood and straightened his back, and sighed to make Asato wonder if he had said something the elderly man found exasperating. Instead, Dr H extended the shears to Asato, saying, "This is getting to be ridiculous."

Asato didn't know what he meant.

"You keep watching my work and twitching your hands like you want to do this yourself. Well," Dr H pushed the shears toward him, "I think you're plenty old enough to understand how this works. Why don't you give it a shot?"

"I-I'm afraid I don't really know what to do," Asato started as he reluctantly took the shears. The doctor's roses had always appeared to him as such fragile living things, he hated to think what would happen if he hurt one.

But Dr H's smile was warm and patient. "I'll show you," he said, and gestured for Asato to join him by one of the roses.

It was a vivacious bush with dark green leaves and full blossoms as white as freshly fallen snow in the sunlight, their petals sparkling like velvet ribbon that had been folded and gathered into itself. Under Dr H's guidance he first snipped off the dead blooms and the flowers that had begun to wither and were turning brown. The brown foliage came off as well. All the while Dr H complimented Asato on his exactness, and the way he seemed to know instinctively where to cut without the doctor's saying so, as though he had been born to do just such a thing. Some people simply have a way with living things, he explained: not intrusive, responsive to the needs of individual creatures, they possess the natural ability to listen to things and understand what makes them grow and thrive, what those who do not have it call having a green thumb. He had had it when he was younger, and it led him to realize that his life's calling was to use that gift in the profession of a doctor of medicine.

"Then the plants are just easier patients?" Asato joked while he worked.

Dr H smiled, but he seemed to miss his humor. "No," he said, "they can be just as fickle and stubborn. Either way they always seem to think they know what's best for them better than you do."

"Well? Don't they?"

Dr H hummed as he thought about that. "Maybe you're right. But in any case, the roses certainly don't complain as much."

Asato chuckled to himself and turned his concentration back to the rose bush. After a few moments, Dr H said suddenly, "Have you ever given thought to becoming a doctor, Tsuzuki?"

Asato shrugged. "I guess. Adults always told my mother I should be one."

"Then I'm not the first person to see it," the doctor said as though to himself. Then pointedly to the boy: "They were not just flattering your mother, you know. I see it in the way you care for these plants, how in tune with living things you are. Not many boys your age can boast that."

But even if that were what Asato wanted, "I don't have the grades, sir."

Dr H was shocked. "What do you mean, don't have the grades? A bright young lad such as yourself? You're probably smarter than half the boys in your class put together. . . ." He trailed off and visibly grew calm, at which point he started again: "Well, even genius has been known to fail before it succeeds. More often than not it is its own worst enemy."

Asato said nothing, but quietly contemplated the doctor's words over the regular snip-snip of the pruning shears. Perhaps he should have taken them as words of advice and reassurance, a signal to believe in himself and step up the pace, or perhaps it was a signal to not take himself so seriously. But neither of those possibilities on this occasion entered Asato's mind. His thoughts had wandered back to Ruka, and how much she expected of him. I cannot afford to fail before I succeed, he thought to himself. For her sake: she's working so hard for mine.

The doctor did not seem to notice the shadow that hung over his train of thought. He stopped Asato suddenly, saying: "That's good. Now, when you've finished dead-heading them, you want to thin the blooms a little. Here, like this." And saying so, he took the shears back and, as Asato watched, began to snip off the young buds that had not yet opened.

Asato panicked despite himself. It was only a rose bush, but all of a sudden he felt it as the living thing it was—a living thing he had just been helping to thrive. "What are you doing?" he said, raising his voice uncharacteristically against Dr H. "You're hurting it!"

"I'm doing no such thing," the doctor said.

But Asato did not believe him, and could not believe his indifferent tone. "Those haven't opened yet."

"All the better. You see, Tsuzuki," Dr H explained as he snipped, "by thinning out the number of flowers that do bloom, you actually stimulate new growth. A plant only has so much energy it can spread around. So if it does not have so many flowers among which to divide that energy, it can concentrate its efforts on making just a few bloom so much more beautifully."

"But those buds you cut off . . . they looked healthy enough." If anything, some of them looked healthier than those that remained. "Weren't they trying their hardest to become flowers, too?"

The doctor sighed. "It isn't a matter of whether they're healthy or not—"

"Then how can you just decide which ones to cut off?"

How could anyone so carelessly decide which lives are worth ending—even if it is for the greater good of the whole? You don't do the same thing to people, Asato thought. But just as soon as that argument entered his brain, he was forced to stop and think about it. Was it not true that the world would be a better place if the few who spent their lives hurting others were to suddenly disappear? Just as wolves pick the old and sick from the herd to make it stronger? Human beings are not like other animals, however; they have rational minds and rational societies. Yes, the lives of many would improve if the few people like that boy Asato had somehow killed and his companions were snipped from the plant of society—but to whom would the power to make that decision even be given? In whose hands would the shears be placed, and could such a person even then conscionably make such a decision?

To make decisions such as that to the point one didn't even bother to think about what he was doing, nor ask himself why he was doing it in the first place, was that what it meant to be a doctor? Because if it was, Asato could no longer be sure that was a profession he wished to pursue, whether his grades were poor or perfect.

These were deep questions indeed for a boy of eleven to face within his heart; so Asato barely heard the doctor's reply. Perhaps it was true that there were some things such a kind-hearted soul such as his could not understand—or perhaps did not want to, lest in the search for answers he come face to face with that darkness Dr H said lies locked away within most souls, and inadvertently set it free.

The doctor must have noticed the boy's cheerful mood had begun to fade, for he stopped his pruning and fixed Asato's gaze with his. "Tsuzuki," he said gently, "is everything all right at school? Are your classmates still harassing you?"

It was a moment before his words actually sank in, and Asato remembered where he was enough to answer, "Oh, no, sir. Nothing like that. They're fine. School is just fine."

"Something at home, then?"

That was a bit closer to the truth, but still not the crux of the matter; and Asato really did not want to share his feelings about his older sister with the doctor, no matter how much he trusted him.

When he shook his head, Dr H leaned back and nodded to himself. "I said something to upset you." He took Asato's downcast expression as an affirmative, and reached out and pulled the boy to him, cradling Asato's head against the crook of his armpit in a fatherly gesture. "I don't know what it was," Dr H said, "but I do hope you will forgive me, Tsuzuki. I'm not used to speaking with young people of your generation, sometimes I forget their experiences are different than mine were growing up."

No doubt that was his way of referring to the war, that had touched the lives of the boys and girls all over the country who grew up during its couple of years, whether they had lost a father or older brother in the fighting or had merely glimpsed the soldiers passing through town.

It seemed to Asato, though, that even the doctor, for all his perceptiveness, could not grasp what to him was inherently upsetting in his very own life. To become so inured to the taking of life on a daily basis was a fate that struck Asato as pitiable. Yes, he pitied the elderly man suddenly, strange as it felt to realize that. As the doctor looked down at him and smiled, trying to raise Asato's spirits, his eyes dark behind his glasses that were backlit by the bright sunlight, it was that man who seemed the smaller of the two figures as he was transformed from a stand-in for that shadowy, larger-than-life dream-father or Asato's childhood to an ordinary old man of flesh and blood, who would eventually die just like the patients he tried his very best to save.

Just like the blossoms he clipped from the rose bush.

In that small garden outside the clinic, Asato was struck by this first realization of the true weight of the reality of mortality. And in that light, the doctor's lined smile seemed very sad indeed.

—

It was as early as the autumn of that same year that Asato's mother first began to show signs of illness.

It began as a general weariness about her manner that Asato had not noticed present before. While cooking over the stove she would suddenly put the back of her hand to her head and say breathlessly that she needed to sit down, or complain while she was sitting of how exhausted she was. It seemed strange that the usual activities that had occupied her days for so long could all of a sudden have such an adverse effect; she was only just entering her late-thirties and had always been one of those women whose apparent age was deceptive. True for as long as Asato could remember his mother had seemed weighed down by a deep sorrow that was always present behind her eyes, and he was not mistaken in his suspicions that it had much to do with the loss from her life of his father, whom—he came to understand later—she had truly loved more than anything, with the possible exception of Asato himself. For some reason he did not understand at the moment, that constant aura of sorrow had actually begun to lift just as gradually as her body seemed to be slowing down. Though there were faint lines just starting to form around her mouth that Asato had not noticed before, her smiling eyes seemed brighter to him than ever.

Then, as the weather grew colder, the coughing fits came. Unobtrusive at first, they seemed to Asato and his mother to be the work of an ordinary flu; until the weeks had turned into months without their letting up, and Asato could no longer believe his mother when she continued to stick to the same old flu story.

Still, as is the way—nay, not with young children, but with people of any age who are the children of their parents, in his heart Asato refused to believe, as his mother did aloud, that anything serious could be to blame, until the afternoon he came home from school to find a woman he recognized as his mother's friend speaking with a strange man in the foyer of his home.

The two discontinued their conversation when the door opened and turned to stare at him as he entered. Simply by the pitying looks on their faces Asato knew something was wrong; and simply a glance at the black bag the strange man carried told him that man was a doctor. What in the world are they doing here? Asato thought indignantly, but even so he already suspected the answer. It lay heavy in his heart.

"Is mother . . ." he started, but feared to go on.

The woman, as though unable to bear looking at him, turned her face toward the rear of the house, and he heard his mother's voice call out: "Is that Asato I hear? Is he home?"

"She's resting in the other room," the doctor said, but Asato hardly needed his reassurance or warning—or whatever his words were meant to be—as he hurried past the two in the direction of his mother's voice.

He found her lying in her futon, her eyes shining when she saw him in stark contrast to the gazes of the other two that had avoided him; and he knew in that moment that nothing too terrible could be wrong if she were smiling so brightly.

He knelt down beside her and took her hands in his. They were warm and their grip strong. Likewise, when he asked her what had happened, she told him in a voice that showed no sign of physical weakness, "I merely fainted is all. Mrs S was here helping me with the winter clothing," she referred to the woman waiting in the foyer, "and I guess I overworked myself. Thankfully she called a doctor, but I feel much better now. It was unseasonably warm today, wasn't it?"

Asato nodded as she resolutely sat up in bed to prove to him her condition was nothing serious; but when he thought back to it he could remember rubbing his frozen hands together in the schoolyard despite the clearness of the day.

He lacked the will to contradict her, however, preferring to take consolation in his mother's renewed show of strength and dismissive words. If anything were gravely wrong either his mother or the doctor would have said something; and since the man had not said a word about her condition, and his mother insisted she was fine, that was what Asato was content to believe. Perhaps it did occur to him that she could be lying to protect him—or perhaps even to protect herself and continue on in blissful denial—but he pushed that thought to the back of his mind as a mere fiction, a mere hypothesis that had no evidence given to support it.

As though in stubborn rebellion his mother's health showed signs of steady if slight improvement, though all through winter the cold shook its resolve just as her body continued to be shaken by daily coughs. It was only after spring had come, bringing with its pink bursts of plum and cherry blossoms the sense of victory that comes from surviving a storm, that the dark shadow of illness returned cruel and ironic over their household once more. Wracked by a particularly intense fit, his mother coughed up blood and fainted at the sight of it; and the doctor was called to their home once again.

His face expressed his displeasure when he emerged from her room after examination, and he said to Asato in a hushed tone of voice, as though fearful some unseen person might overhear: "Her condition has grown significantly worse since last year."

"The lapse was rather sudden," Asato tried in her defense.

"I see. However, it disappoints me to see she has ignored my recommendations for treatment. If she had, a full recovery might have been likely, but I'm afraid there might not be much I can do for her at this late stage."

Asato started. Recommendations? Treatment? His mother had said nothing to him of the sort. Was it true that all this time she had insisted she was fine she was just pretending after all?

His bewilderment must have been evident on his face, because the doctor's expression suddenly softened with concern and pity. "I thought your mother told you," he said by way of excuse. He opened his mouth to say something else, then thought better of it, but Asato could guess what he had meant to say. She must have begged the doctor not to tell Asato that last time, promising him that she would tell her son herself and had every intention of following his advice. She must have lied to both of them.

But why she would feel the need to do that, when they could have made her well months ago, Asato could not understand.

—

Consumption was what they called it, a vague catch-all word for a bunch of wasting diseases no doctor of medicine had a real cure for in those days.

It was a perversely appropriate name. Asato could never ascertain just what it was supposed to refer to. The way his mother was consumed by coughing fits? Or an organism that was slowly consuming her body, wearing down its organs until they were so full of her own blood she had to cough it up? It was horrible to even begin to think about such a thing. It might have been a natural occurrence as the doctor said, but it seemed to Asato an indisputably evil thing, if its entire existence were about nothing more than slowly eating a person from the inside out, until there was nothing left. That such an unholy thing was allowed to exist was an injustice he could not for the life of him reconcile.

However, if there were one good side to his mother's being ill it was that it brought Ruka home.

It was just after that collapse in spring that she returned. As soon as she had heard word of her mother's illness she had left her work in the city, without a single care about the wages she would be losing in doing so. Asato found it difficult at first to believe that Ruka had not heard word of it from their mother the autumn before, but it was useless to dwell on a past no one could change. Their mother's present health was what occupied him now—namely, its improvement—in addition to his school work, the load of which seemed more unbearable than ever now that he was in his last year of primary school.

Asato was not sure how he would have managed without Ruka's supporting presence. While their mother was still able to be up and around, she helped with the cooking and caught up on the cleaning that had fallen behind; and when the weather warmed and their mother was confined most of the day to her bed, Ruka took on the extra workload without so much as a complaint, falling into the motherly role so naturally. Somehow she even convinced their mother to take the medicine the doctor had prescribed, something at which Asato had not been very successful—though all parties involved doubted its ability to do more than lessen the severity of her symptoms.

Asato admired his older sister for having such strength, when it was lacking in their mother and quite often in himself as well. When he came home he would always find her bustling about the house with a constant smile on her face, though it might not have always reached those sorrowful eyes. It was a smile of endurance, tacitly willing him to take strength from its strength. No matter how terrible they seem at the present time, things always turn out for the best, Ruka had told him since he was young, and that smile was a constant reminder of that.

Yet it shamed Asato as well, for once again it made him feel as though their situations should have been reversed, and he was embarrassed by the realization that there really was little he could do to fix his mother and older sister's conditions. He read them stories from the daily paper over breakfast just as Ruka had done once, when she was the same age as he, and took over the job of cooking dinner when he came home from school if Ruka was otherwise occupied (as was more often than not the case).

But these were little things, indeed, and he confessed to Ruka one day how guilty he felt, that he was not yet old enough to make up for the pay his older sister was losing by coming home to take care of their mother. It was an unbearable predicament, putting such a burden on her who deserved it least of all. If only their mother had fallen ill ten years later, he said, when he had a respectable job and enough money to take care of both of them without worry.

Ruka just shook her head. She would hear none of such nonsense, she said: "The very reason I decided to come back was for your sake, Asato." And though he did understand her meaning, it was little consolation, if anything only increasing the heavy weight of being indebted to her, even if she was constantly reassuring him: "This is only what big sisters do, and decent daughters."

Once again her words struck him with such admiration it made his chest hurt, and he wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms the way she held him all those years ago, curling up behind him in bed as though her arms were the only thing keeping him from slipping altogether from this plane of existence.

That pain in his chest had changed somehow in her absence, however. It had grown different in a way he could not explain, except perhaps to say he needed her more desperately than ever now, with their mother ill—more desperately even than he had needed her when he was harassed and beaten for his purple eyes. At least then he had known his enemy. It was human. He could not say the same for a disease not even the doctors whose job it was to do so understood. To him her presence here was like a miracle, a blessing in light of such grave unknowns—the time she had been gone seeming so much longer than the nine or so months it had actually been.

It was strange how so much could change between them in that short amount of time—that short amount of time that was the same as the human gestation period. Perhaps it was not stretching the truth to say something had been born with Ruka's return, something that had been gestating in the distance between them the longer she was away, something that had grown inside Asato. Perhaps it was because she had left him nothing to remind him of her face, but it seemed to Asato that Ruka's beauty had grown while she was away, or else he was seeing her existing beauty through new eyes unclouded for the first time by familiarity. He had always mourned the lack of an equal to her saintly beauty in those around him, but now he wondered if it were even possible for any woman to possess such exquisiteness of grace and spirit as she did. And that realization would sometimes stir in him a queer longing that tied knots in his stomach. Her casual touches, her gentle kisses on his temple at night when she thought he was asleep, carried a new weight that filled him at once with rapture and a fear he could not explain.

One day she handed him a photograph while their mother was resting, and said as though she had just remembered the whole thing: "You asked me once in one of your letters if you could have something to remember me by, didn't you? I didn't have anything to give at the time, but now . . ."

It hardly seemed necessary anymore; with her home, he could see Ruka whenever he wanted. He had only to open his eyes. But he nodded and accepted the photograph anyway.

His sister's image, captured on a bright day before the blooming cherry trees, her bright kimono and the smile almost hidden in her white face faded to the indifferent monochrome of sepia, was nevertheless stunning. Asato had never realized before, but there was quite a resemblance to their mother, as she had looked in that wedding portrait taken so many years before. Only the real thing dampened that Ruka's perfection. Still, the Ruka of that moment, captured forever eighteen on fragile celluloid, was smiling more brightly than Asato had ever seen her smile, without the faintest shadow of sorrow to darken it. Was this how his sister looked when she was truly happy? And why had he never been allowed to see it with his own eyes?

Moreover, how had he failed to make her as happy as she had been when this picture was taken?

The answer was there in the leftmost edge of the photograph: the arm of a young man in a Western suit, perhaps even a school uniform, disappearing behind her back. The rest of the young man was missing. The leftmost edge of the photograph was a rough and ragged line indicating some feeling of regret or anger or despair possessed by some Ruka between the one in the photograph and the one of the present. Yet even that was something to be jealous of—something that caused that dark thing within Asato to rear its head as bitter envy stabbed him like a knife. Who was the young man who had been torn from the photograph? Who had been privy to a life from which Ruka had shut her own brother? Who was it who had made Ruka as happy as Asato himself had never been able to, and so angry as well? For someone like Ruka to tear him from something as precious as a photograph—she must have loved him very much.

Asato did not ask her about the identity of the young man in such a way as that, but his curiosity was too great for him to remain silent. But Ruka just shrugged and told him nonchalantly not to worry about it, which was worse than saying nothing at all.

She probably had not meant it as such, but it seemed to Asato utterly cruel of her to be giving him such a photograph, even if he had asked for one. Any photograph would have done, except that one. But he could not refuse it either. She was so beautiful in it. And in just that one moment of holding the photograph, it had become something irreversibly precious to him he could not give up if it had to be pried from his fingers.

—

How far the happiness of that photograph was from the resilient smiles on Ruka's face these dark days was apparent now that Asato had something with which to compare them. Now he saw through the falseness of those smiles to the sorrow and frustration that brooded just beneath them, and Ruka's genuine desire to hide her foreboding from him and pretend that all was well.

Their mother was dying. That was a fact that was accepted by all, though its reality may have been considerably slower to sink in. Asato could not be sure even his mother understood the ramifications, as she faced everyone who came to wish for her recovery with the introverted smile of a buddha. Perhaps the disease had made her delusional, was all Asato could think, for she spoke now with a distant look in her dark eyes that seemed to have seen the darkness of death already, and had no fear of it.

The doctor, whose profession abhorred frank predictions of a patient's death, had become quite good at avoiding the topic of the terminal nature of the disease. But Asato's mother seemed to all appearances to have made her peace with it. One afternoon as Asato was helping her to bed, she took his hands in hers, seeing the anxiety about her rapidly degrading condition that showed clearly on his face. She asked him the matter, and he could hardly face her as he said in a small voice: "Mother . . . is it true what everyone's been saying? Because I don't believe it. I believe like the doctor says that you're going to get better. You have to."

For me, and for Ruka, he thought, you have to.

His mother looked at him with such pity in her dark eyes, however, that he felt his conviction shake.

"It's all right, Asato," she told him softly—in that same distant way in which she had addressed the well-wishers. "Be strong, for your sister. Don't be sad or afraid. I know I'm not."

He put on a resolute smile, even if he did not feel it in his heart, as he asked why not.

"Because I know that soon I will be seeing your father again, and how can I be afraid of that?" She turned to him and raised herself slightly in a renewed burst of energy. "When I look in your eyes, Asato, I could almost swear I can see him already, and it gives me such strength—"

"But father's not dead," Asato said, shaking her hand in his, though it seemed the one he most needed to convince was himself. "And you're not going to die either. Not yet, not by a long shot. You're going to get well again." Each proclamation felt less and less like the truth, but he had to go on, if only for his own sake. "I just know it.

"And anyway, how can you be so sure he is dead?" Because Asato was sure he would have felt it in his bones.

His mother smiled as she looked into the air over his shoulder, and said in a voice just above a whisper that was filled with so much adoration it made him envious: "Because he told me himself that he'd be waiting for me. 'On the other side of this life.'"

She wouldn't say any more on the subject, but left Asato those words to ponder in silent despair.

It seemed that the number of people around them who continued to hold to the belief that his mother would get well was shrinking by the week. Asato resented it; for each time someone's mindset turned, it was as though they had invited ill omen into the Tsuzuki home with them.

His uncle was one of the worst offenders. Since Asato was a child he had never shown Asato anything but indifference at best and suspicion at worst. It was not because of anything Asato had done to him, but rather because of Asato's father and his mother's disgrace, and the reminders of them that he carried with him constantly. His young wife was not much better, but at least her coolness was bred from unfamiliarity. She was only half a decade older than Ruka, and she tried to treat Ruka as if she were a younger sister, though neither Ruka nor Asato could find it within themselves to warm to her. To Asato especially, his mother's younger brother came off as impetuous, and he vowed he would never treat Ruka the way that man treated their mother. "You must make out a will," he would say each time he and his wife visited the house, "now before it is too late. Think of your children."

But Asato wondered if it was not his own well-being he had in mind. If he wasn't impatient for their mother to leave him an inheritance—as there was nothing to leave—then he was certainly concerned about being saddled with Asato's care. As is the natural way with older sisters, his mother was patient with his uncle, and agreed with the logic of his urging, even if Asato himself found it more selfish than logical. An attorney dropped by a few times; he was always on his way out the door when Asato saw him upon arriving home from school.

Despite her own best efforts, Ruka's smile was also affected by what to Asato was their mother's fatalistic thinking. It slipped more and more often, allowing the frustration to show through in greater frequency as their mother's condition worsened. "She's never going to get better with a mindset like that," Asato would sometimes hear her muttering to herself when she thought no one was within earshot. What a great burden it must be on his older sister, he thought at times like those, who was so recently dependent on their mother, to suddenly have that parent dependent on her without so much as a savings to fall back upon. It would wear on any young woman, but perhaps because he was so unused to seeing such a side of Ruka—whether because she had hidden it from Asato in the past or his mind steadfastly ignored it—it was difficult for him to reconcile the gentle-hearted Ruka he loved so dearly with the one who sighed after their mother and slammed down pots in the kitchen.

She cried a lot these days, Asato knew, even if his older sister hid her tears from him. It seemed so alien to see her struggle with her emotions, in light of their mother's queer contentedness, her calm graciousness, that day after day seemed the only thing about her person that had not grown increasingly fragile.

Such as one warm morning while, as they ate breakfast around the small table which was about the most physical activity their mother could bring herself to do anymore, their mother very slowly put down her chopsticks, fixed a distant expression on the sliding doors, and said cheerfully, and as though the person in question were not in the room: "Do you know what would make me very happy? I would so like to see Ruka settle down with a nice young man before I go. It's a mother's greatest dream to see her daughter happily married, and I only wish I could see it fulfilled."

Asato glanced at his mother, wondering which of them she was speaking to.

But the sound of Ruka slamming her bowl down onto the table made him jump. He turned to look at her, catching a glimpse of her tightly closed lips and wet eyes. Their mother hardly even noticed. She said nothing, even when Ruka quietly excused herself, rose from the table, and hurried from the room.

Asato hurried after her.

It had seemed like an earnest enough thing for their mother to say—with no ulterior motives beneath it that Asato could detect, at least—so why was Ruka so angry with their mother? When he stopped her and asked her, she looked as though she might burst into tears right there, her dark eyes filled with such sadness as she gazed at him.

"Oh, Asato," she said, "I'm not angry with mother. Just frustrated is all. I know she only says such things because she wants to know I'll have someone to look after me when she's gone.

"Someone besides you," she added with a sad smile when she saw him open his mouth.

"Then why does she frustrate you? Because you don't want to get married?"

Maybe that was not the best way to put it. But Ruka closed her mouth in a tight line and looked down at the floor. "That isn't it," she said after a while. "But if I told you . . . Oh, you would hate me! You wouldn't understand."

"Understand what?"

She took a deep breath before continuing, as though every word were a terrible pain she were enduring. "You have such a generous soul, Asato," she began slowly, "it may be difficult for you to understand. People like you . . . to them it is no trouble at all to love so many people unconditionally, each with all their heart; and no matter how many people you love it does not fill up. Not ever. But mother is not one of those people."

Ruka would not look him in the eye as she murmured solemnly, "She can't do that. Her heart never learned that it doesn't have to run out of room. Oh, she loves you with everything she has. She loved your father like that, too. But there's only so much room in a heart like that, for only so many people."

In the grips of a sudden panic, Asato blurted out, "Then what about you?"

Ruka's sad smile would have said enough. But she said instead: "Please, don't hold it against mother. She can't help who she is, no more than you can help who you are."

"But you're her child, too. You're my sister!"

Asato could hardly believe what Ruka was telling him. Did that mean their mother didn't love her? That the adoration for her own daughter that should have been so natural had been usurped by Asato at his birth? It was preposterous. And yet it made some sense as well. What a terrible woman their mother was, he thought though he loathed himself for doing so—even if it were a trait that was as innate in her person as his strange eyes were inborn in his, something beyond her control. If he had never been born, then was it not true that the affection their mother showered on him would have gone completely to Ruka? Once again, everything returned to that simple truth: that his very existence was a thorn in Ruka's.

She must have thought he misunderstood her—though Asato thought he understood perfectly—for she said quickly: "I knew I should not have said anything. You must hate me for saying such a thing about our own mother, especially at a time like this."

"No." He shook his head with conviction. "How could I hate you?"

"Then please, for my sake, don't hate mother because of what I've said."

Asato hated to see Ruka plead. However, it seemed this was one time when he could not oblige her wishes.

No, he could not say that he hated their mother. But no matter how he tried, the more he dwelled on what Ruka had told him the more he resented their mother's inability to love Ruka as equally as she did him. Perhaps his older sister should have never told him her suspicions, but if she hadn't would he have been any better off? To live in blissful ignorance of his sister's plight, or to be forever changed by the consciousness of their mother's inner betrayal at his birth—one was not necessarily less painful than the other.

No doubt Ruka's intentions had been pure, but Asato could not help seeing his mother with changed eyes. Even his childhood memories returned filtered through the lenses of this new information. Though she was gravely ill, he could not rid himself of the niggling feeling that everything their mother did or said these days was clouded by selfishness. He knew such thinking was the product of that dark thing inside him, but it was only too easy to embrace the truth in its logic.

He could hardly stand to look at his mother after that, let alone tend to her as faithfully as he once had. The heat and humidity of summer made her body thin and her stamina weak, as it seemed to do nothing but feed the disease living inside her, keeping her confined to her bed. To look at her now was to stare mortality in the face, and that was a reality the likes of which Asato could not face above all, for to do so would be the same as admitting defeat to the disease. It would be no different than consigning his mother to a sure death. It was like embracing the knowledge that he and Ruka, too, would someday suffer and die.

However, more than that, Ruka's words to him about their mother would not leave him in peace. Even the illness seemed to him a selfish thing their mother clung to, cruelly indifferent to her children's suffering; and, moreover, cruelly indifferent to the bitter fact that without her they became orphans. True Ruka was a grown woman, but where had she to go but back to the tailors in town—which was still more than could be said for Asato, who would have to rely on the charity of family whom he had only rarely seen, and who certainly did not want him and never had. To die at such a time was irresponsible, to say the least. For what decent woman would willingly choose such a fate for her children, while dreaming of reunion with a lover she would probably never see again one way or the other?

It made Asato so angry to think such things; and when he examined that anger that he knew his mother did not deserve, he in turn became angry with himself. In one way or the other, his emotions conspired to keep him away from home: Away from the relatives and old family friends who treated him like a pest to be tolerated. Away from the doctor with his medicinal smell and regular visits that accomplished nothing. From the ashen face of his mother, and the sickly air that hung about the house like dust.

And away from Ruka, who had the power to at once shame him with her loyalty to a mother that by her own words could not love her as she should, and rend his heart with the perpetual futility of her existence in that house. It was all so painful for him, but he could not face her most of all. If it did occur to him that he was abandoning her when she needed him most, the one thing he swore he would never do, he quickly convinced himself the situation was otherwise. It was too difficult any other way. The way they all treated him just went to show it was better for all involved if he just stayed far away.

—

Dr H became once again his only confidante, the only man in his life whose perspective he trusted. Dr H was always sincere with him, he told himself, no matter what the issue. He alone treated Asato like an adult.

And he shared Asato's belief that it was not beyond his mother to get well again. At least, when Asato said so with such conviction, he never argued and always had some encouraging word to bolster the boy's spirits.

The Meiji emperor passed away that summer, and not long after General Nogi and his wife followed him by committing ritual suicide. The nation was plunged into mourning, not just for their ruler but for the modern age into which he had brought their country. For many who had lived the greater part of their lives, if not all of it, in that glorious period, there was a real sense of the unknown lurking around the bend, for it seemed impossible to imagine anything could follow that period's great heights but a period of decline.

To many men like Dr H, however, it was General Nogi's death that touched them the greatest. Whether out of nostalgia or something more universal, they spoke of honor and loyalty with fond, distant looks in their eyes and seemed to hold him up as some sort of great national hero in his death. Some even suggested he should be deified. When Asato went to visit the doctor at his clinic during those long summer days, it seemed his eyes were always glued to the newspaper, in which every day there would be someone praising General Nogi's patriotism.

It was only when Asato said in a huff of disgust, "I don't think it was patriotic what he did at all!" that the doctor was shaken out of his reverie, as though noticing Asato's presence for the first time.

He fixed the boy an astonished look. "You don't?"

Asato shook his head.

"His loyalty doesn't move you one bit?"

"Not at all." Then, realizing how unpatriotic he sounded himself, compared to all those he heard at school and in town gushing tearfully about Nogi's self-sacrifice, he revised, "That is, it's not as though I have something against his loyalty to the emperor. I just think it was selfish of the General to kill himself for the emperor for no reason."

"No reason? I don't know, Tsuzuki, I'm sure many would say redemption and honor were reason enough."

"But it's irresponsible! He left the country without his leadership—and not because he was dying himself, or because anyone asked him to, but because he felt like it. How can you tell me that isn't selfish?"

Dr H hummed in thought as he sat back and folded the newspaper. "I guess I can see your point. However . . ."

Feeling humbled by the doctor's admission, Asato said in a lower voice, in his own defense: "I just think he should have thought about what the rest of us are going to do, is all."

Something in his manner or his words made the doctor suddenly grow quiet, and he said in a gentler, more understanding tone of voice, "We're not talking about General Nogi anymore, are we?"

Asato looked up at him. It hurt even trying to admit Dr H was right, bringing tears to his eyes that never fell. He hung his head in place of a nod.

"Shouldn't you be at home with your mother?" Dr H said. "I'm sure she's worried sick about you."

"She knows where I am," Asato answered in a tiny croak.

"That's not what I mean."

He meant that Asato's mother was dying, and that every moment she had left with her child would be precious to her—as it should have been to him. But they both knew he would not say it out loud, as he had made a tacit promise to Asato not to speak of death, even if it meant pretending a terminal disease was anything but. "Shouldn't you be helping her through this trying time in her life?" he asked instead. "I think that's what she would want—"

"How would you know? You wouldn't understand."

"On the contrary! Tsuzuki . . . as a doctor I deal with this sort of situation almost on a daily basis, but I tell you this now not as a doctor but out of personal experience. As someone's son. That there is nothing I wouldn't have given for another minute with my mother, just to say all the things I never had the chance to—"

"She isn't dying!" Asato yelled.

The doctor's old shoulders slumped as though with the unbearable weight of pity. "Tsuzuki . . ."

"She isn't! She couldn't," he said, nodding to himself. "She wouldn't do that to me and Ruka. She just wouldn't!"

"Because that would be irresponsible?"

Asato looked up. He couldn't stand the way Dr H was staring at him, as though he were a poor downtrodden animal. There was no reason for his sympathy, he told himself: there was nothing wrong. How could he, whom Asato had trusted most to see things his way, say such a thing about his mother?

On some level deep down within himself, however, Asato knew he only reacted in such a way because it was true. Every bit of it. That was exactly how he felt. And it wasn't a very fitting way for a son who loved his mother to think.

"Tsuzuki," Dr H began again, "don't you think these are feelings everyone experiences at some point in his life? It's nothing to be ashamed about. So why don't you go home, and be with your mother—for her sake if nothing else."

He went to put his hand on Asato's shoulder, but Asato shrugged it off with a violence that surprised the doctor: The boy had never reacted to him that way before. "How could you do this to me?" Asato wailed. "I thought I could talk to you—I believed what you said—"

"You believed what you wanted to believe, Tsuzuki. That's all. Look, I'm sorry if I mislead you in any way, if I gave you false hope, but . . . I didn't want to hurt you any more than you were already hurting!"

But Asato would hear none of it. He flew out the door with the doctor's words stumbling after him, into the summer garden with its bushes of roses blooming magnificently in the sweltering summer heat. He could hardly bear to look at those roses as he went by—those roses which he used to be so fond of, and used to look forward to seeing. It just seemed so callous, that anything could be thriving so happily while he suffered like this. He suffered, and no one cared.

He mounted his bicycle and kicked off the pavement, wanting nothing more at that moment than to put a great deal of distance between himself and that rose garden, and the elderly doctor who no doubt had come out to stare after him. Asato did not look back. I hate him, he said in his mind. Even if he hadn't meant to, it still seemed as though he had betrayed Asato.

Just like that man betrayed mother, he thought. That man I've been thinking of all this time as my father. But what has he ever done for me? He probably never wanted me after all—that must be why he left. I'm sure of it. He isn't dead. He's just a selfish, lying coward. He's never done anything for me, and he's never done anything for mother. He probably wouldn't even care that she's sick.

How could she have ever loved a man like him? I hate him. I hate him I hate him I hate him!

The sky was overcast with dark gray clouds, but it was not raindrops he felt falling on the back of his hands as he pedaled with all his might. He sniffed and wiped away his tears with the back of his hand to clear his vision, and that was when he felt their sting. He choked back the sob that rose in his throat, concentrating on the road in front of him. The press of people was suddenly unbearable.

He swerved off the street into a shady park, where the cicadas were chirping madly even under the threat of rain, and the leaves on their trees rustled in anticipation. Under that muggy air he stumbled off the bike and ran for the shelter of the trees, where, far from human eyes, he hugged his knees to his chest and wished to disappear into the dirt he sat on and the trunk against which he leaned his back. Just as he had years ago when he had run from the boys who beat him, he prayed in vain that they might absorb him into their selves and rescue him from this existence. It didn't matter to him where they might take him. It couldn't be any worse than here, where he didn't belong anyway.

The whole world seemed against him—the whole world outside of this park, which, welcoming though its embrace was, could not console him, and remained ignorant of his agony. No matter what he did, he could feel it slowly tearing his mother and sister from his grasp. Just as it had torn away that man who left him this shameful life, and Ruka's father, and the Meiji emperor—and countless other men he did not know how to mourn. And now he had lost his best friend to it as well.

—

He would have stayed in that park forever if he were able to, until it finally had no choice but to absorb him, even if all that was left to absorb was the rotting flesh and blood of a corpse of a twelve-year-old boy. Yet somehow his body of its own accord dragged him back home, if not to his mother's bedside then at least to Ruka's sorrowful eyes and distracted cooking. Class continued as always; time did not stop for the Meiji emperor, and it certainly did not stop for him.

The rain came, and when it did it fell for days on end. The sound of big, thick raindrops pounding on the tiles of the roof and dripping from the eaves kept him awake at night. It drowned out Ruka's stifled sobs, but it could not drown out the sound of his mother coughing in the other room. For days on end it would fall, soaking everything in sight and snapping the delicate stems of flowers only to leave in its reprieve a muggy calm as oppressive as a wool coat worn in a sauna.

In a strange way, Asato actually welcomed the oppressive weather, for it felt at last as though he had been granted an externalization of the heavy and sluggish turmoil of emotions that was locked away within his heart; and when people complained of its leaving them utterly unable to be comfortable he felt justified, eager to say, See? This is what it has been like for me all along, and it never let up. What do you really have to complain about, you people who have only suffered a couple of days? This has been my existence for years. The sight of respectable men in shirtsleeves fanning themselves with newspapers and women showing damp necks beneath the collars of their kimono was to him a taste, however unsatisfying, of retribution. It never crossed his mind that that weather he embraced masochistically might be killing his mother.

He watched those suffering people from the park, to which he ran after the final bell. Classmates asked after the disappearance of his smile and usual good humor, but even their concern was selfish, or at least blind to the plight that awaited him at home. Afraid to return there, and unwilling to open his heart to those boys and girls whose relation to him would undoubtedly change as a result—just as he was unwilling to face Dr H after the embarrassment of his last outburst—the emptiness of the park in the muggiest part of summer became his only escape. Looking back on it, he wasn't sure what he had done while he was there other than sit and stew in the heat, and resist the instinctual urge to return home until his stomach would permit it no longer. Even the rain was no deterrent. He had never caught pneumonia—a fact that came with some irony now—and he was beyond caring about his clothing or who would have to clean them. He never cried those afternoons; the cicadas did that for him.

He had stolen the photograph of his parents from the family shrine some time ago. In a fit of frustration and hatred while Ruka and their relatives had left the house momentarily empty, and his mother lay asleep in her room, Asato had dashed that picture to the kitchen floor until the glass in the frame cracked and shattered. He had been unable to throw out the photograph, however, no matter how disgusted he was with those two smiling figures out of the past, and had removed it from the frame instead and kept it folded in his pocket. His mother would never know the difference anyway, he figured; she was bedridden now, and she seemed to have a pretty clear picture of his father in her mind these days.

He had not been able to bring himself to look at the photograph since then, but now under the shade of the zelkova trees he pulled it out of his pocket and unfolded it, gently smoothing out the creases against his thigh. As he stared at the sepia faces of his parents, he tried to recall the resentment he had felt for them earlier that had prompted him to break that picture frame, but it remained stubbornly in remission. Against his will he longed for them both, and for the childhood he had often dreamed about that had never been his.

And he wondered what he was doing there, foolishly trying with all his might to hate these people who had once been so happy. Was it their happiness that he resented so much? Was it because that happiness had never been his to begin with—aside from what fumes of its burnt-up fuel he was left to survive on in infancy—though he was a product of it himself?

He heard the first patter of warm raindrops falling on the canopy of leaves above him before he felt them. A single drop fell on his mother's face in the photograph, and he quickly wiped it away in horror. The way the rain warped her features in that half a second frightened him, filling him with an ominous feeling he was compelled to kill immediately. He knew he should return home, as he folded the photograph again and put it safely in his pocket, but that same fear moved his feet in a different direction, under the awnings of storefronts in town.

There Asato slipped inside a small Western-style cafe and ordered a piece of cake. Money, always tight, was even tighter these days; and he knew Ruka had entrusted that money to him to buy groceries. But in a spirit of rebelliousness he slammed the coins down on the counter of that cafe instead. The slice of cake didn't even pique his appetite like it usually did. The bright red of fresh strawberries on top of buttery cream seemed to be mocking him, twisting his stomach in knots. But he had nothing left if he did not have his resentment. He chewed and swallowed large forkfuls of cake anyway, as though in doing so he might find his anger again in a stomach full of sweets, but all it brought up from within him was the stinging feeling of welling tears.

Sitting at that cafe bar, he was struck by an urgency he could no longer ignore. Maybe it was something in the way the afternoon had grown suddenly dark, or a distant roll of thunder prickling with static electricity. An overwhelming feeling of repulsion and guilt knocked him stumbling from his stool and pushed him out the door. If the warm rain did not soak him in minutes, the splash of water collected in the puddles his hurrying feet landed in finished the job, but he did not care. It was a fear stronger than any he had felt before that drove him on at a sprint, a fear that pulled him to his house like a magnet. Asato thought he had never run so hard in his life, except perhaps when the boys of that small town had been chasing him, and this time speed was no less important.

He came to an abrupt stop at the gate of his home. A sense of dark and quiet hung about the house like he had never known before, and it hit him like running into a wall. It's just my imagination, that ominous quiet, Asato told himself as he stepped inside and made his way up the walk. It's only because of the bad weather. When I step inside, everything will be the way it always was. It has to be.

But when he opened the door he found Mrs S standing on the landing in worried silence, refusing to look at him just as she had that clear day last autumn. What she was doing there once more, Asato told himself he did not want to: her presence was an ill omen he could do without. His gaze searched out his older sister, first in the parlor and the dining room, but he caught sight of her in neither place, and there were no sounds nor aromas coming from the kitchen.

Then Asato saw his uncle standing in the hall, his arm around his wife's shoulders in an uncharacteristic display of affection, and he knew.

He felt his heart beating wildly in his chest. The doctor was just stepping out of his mother's room. The silence that followed him was oppressive, as though Asato had gone suddenly deaf upon stepping into the house. "What's going on?" Asato demanded of the man. "Why is everyone here? Where's Ruka?"

The doctor knitted his brow as though Asato had physically assaulted him. "Son," he began, though he needn't have said any more than that, "it pains me to have to tell you this, but your mother—"

"No!"

Asato would not let him finish. He pushed bodily past the man and into his mother's room, where Ruka was kneeling beside their mother's futon. He fell to his own knees on the other side of his mother's body and felt for her hand beneath the quilt, muttering as he did so, "No, it isn't true. It isn't." Her hand in his was still warm and dry, and her face when he gazed at it still showed a faint blush of life in her cheeks and beads of sweat on her brow. Her eyes were closed in a peaceful expression and her pale lips turned slightly upward in a smile, as though she were in the middle of a fond dream.

"What are you all looking like that for? She's just sleeping," he said aloud, in hopes the sound of his voice might cut through the grave silence and make it so. "That's all." That had to be it. She looked too peaceful, too beautiful to be dead. Yet his voice wavered, and no one else would utter a word in agreement. It was up to him alone to prove it. Asato put his hands on his mother's shoulders and shook her gently, pleading with her to wake up. Sometimes it took a moment, he tried to explain, but the words caught in his throat. She didn't wake. She didn't even stir.

But if his mother really were dead, wouldn't she feel different in his arms?

"Do something!" he yelled to those who waited out in the hall when his efforts failed to revive her. He clutched his mother's hand but she wasn't responding. If she was still warm, didn't that mean they still had time? Didn't that mean it wasn't too late? "Why are you all just standing around? Why isn't anyone doing anything!"

"Where have you been, Asato?"

Asato looked up at the intrusion of the harsh voice of his uncle. That man and his wife had slipped back into the room, as had the doctor, who alone stared at Asato with sympathetic eyes. For the first time Asato noticed that Ruka was crying across the futon from him. Though she tried her best to stifle her sobs with her sleeve, he could hear her hitched breathing behind the fabric, that to him was the most painful sound in the world. He wanted so much to reach out to her, but the others standing about them like vultures impatient for a corpse made him freeze.

"I asked you where you've been," his uncle said again. His eyes were wide as though he were astonished at Asato's audacity to return here. "Do you know your mother was asking for you all afternoon? She was still asking for you when she finally slipped away."

Asato couldn't answer. He bit his lip as the tears flowed freely down his cheeks, leaving dark spots where they and the rain dripping from his hair wet his mother's clothes. He could feel the thing inside him bristling like a wounded animal with anger at that man's accusing words, and he feared if he allowed himself to utter a single word in response he would lose control of it in front of all these people. In front of his mother and Ruka. He could not allow that to happen. He would not give those vultures the satisfaction.

He jumped to his feet and flew out the door. Ruka reached for him and cried his name, but he ignored her. He grabbed his bicycle from the yard and headed for the one remaining person to whom he could think of to turn. If his own family, his mother's own doctor was not going to do a thing to help her, then maybe that person would. There was no one else. Everyone else had abandoned him and his mother.

When Asato finally arrived at Dr H's clinic, he left the bicycle forgotten on the step and pounded on the door, calling for the doctor. The old man's eyes went wide behind his glasses when he answered, and he ushered Asato into the room, remarking, "Tsuzuki, you're drenched. What in the world happened?"

Apparently he seemed most concerned that the boy was going to catch a chill.

Asato hardly managed to speak coherently through his tears, sobbing, "Please, sir . . . It's my mother. She's sick. She needs help right away and everyone's just standing there—"

"Try to calm down," the doctor told him apologetically, shaking his head. "I can't understand you, Tsuzuki."

"She's dying! And no one will do a thing to help her! They just let her lie there and do nothing. . . ."

As Asato wiped away his tears, the doctor's shoulders slumped and he could find nothing to say.

"Please," Asato said. "You have to help her. She isn't moving. She isn't moving at all. I tried! I tried calling her, but she just wouldn't wake up—"

His last syllables faded in a whimper of despair and Dr H pulled him into his arms. This time Asato could not refuse if he had even had the strength to. He clung to that man who was like a grandfather to him and buried his cries in his waistcoat. The hand that stroked his hair to calm him only coaxed out more tears, and made his insides twist in an agony so great he wondered if he might die of it. He felt his knees shake and gripped the doctor's shirt sleeves even tighter, though by the other's reassuring words he knew the doctor would not let him fall.

The gratitude the boy suddenly felt was almost as overwhelming as his grief, and with it came the heavy weight of guilt, threatening to sink him like an anchor. Everything Dr H had said to him was true. The only one who had been selfish was he—and what Asato wouldn't give to undo it all! But the elderly doctor needed no apology for what had passed between them the last time; it had not even crossed his mind. Surely Asato did not deserve such kindness as this, after all that he had said in his heart. Let alone after spending grocery money on sweets while his mother lay dying, though knowing that man he would probably even forgive Asato such a sin.

Dr H did not tell Asato everything would be all right. He knew the boy well enough to know that was not what he needed to hear. Instead he merely allowed everything that had been buried inside Asato to flow out—no lies, and no judgments. "It's all my fault," Asato choked out against his chest. "I wasn't there . . ."

"You didn't know," the doctor said gently against his hair. "How could you?"

"But you don't understand. It's all my fault mother got sick. If I had never been born . . ." He squeezed his eyes shut. She would have been better off if he were dead. "I couldn't save her!"

"There was nothing you could have done, Tsuzuki," the doctor told him resolutely, and his voice seemed to Asato like a single lifesaver keeping him afloat, even if he couldn't so easily believe the words. "It's only natural to feel responsible, but there wasn't anything you could have done. Not against a disease like that. I swear it."

Asato wanted so much to believe that, even if to do so was impossible at the moment. Even if he was presently filled with such hatred for his pathetic self a part of him wanted to give up on everything, if in doing so he could somehow bring his mother back, and wipe away Ruka's tears. He looked up at the doctor's face, which showed its age under the shadow of his sympathetic grieving. For a moment he wished that man were really his father, because he hadn't the slightest idea of where he was going to go now, or what he was going to do.

He wasn't sure when he fell asleep either, only that he woke later that evening on the seat of Dr H's Model 20 to the rumbling of the engine and the jerkiness of the road beneath his body. The rain was still falling on the canopy of the car, though the day had turned even darker and the street lanterns were already lit. His clothes were still wet, and though it should have been the least of his concerns, he felt sorry that the one time the doctor took him for a ride in his automobile Asato had to get rain water on the seats. For that matter, he regretted for the doctor's sake that it had to be under these sad circumstances. He truly owed that man so much, he thought, that he could never repay if he lived a hundred years.

Ruka was there to greet him when he arrived. She threw her arms around him heedless of all those who surrounded them and walked him back into the house. Her sleeves like the wings of a mother bird shielded him from all the unfamiliar faces, and from his uncle's displeasure. She smiled as she said in a tearful voice that she had been sick with worry about him, though there were no more tears that she could shed.

The rest followed like something in a dream, hazy and shadowed and only vaguely remembered when consciousness became clear once again. Which it eventually did, though it seemed at the time it never would. Time did not stop.

—


	6. Tsuzuki File, Part B

**A word on the Tsuzuki chapter:** My intent with the character refered to as K was not to create an original love interest to rival any accepted pairings, but rather to provide a catalyst for Tsuzuki's breakdown; any individuality to his character is secondary to how it develops Tsuzuki's. It was in many ways a response to that incredibly vague, unexplained reference to a "forbidden love" Tsuzuki makes in the Saint Michel arc, although the argument for that person being Ruka is the strongest I've heard so far (which I hope I've also addressed). So, again, speculation out the kazoo, but, after all, when has that ever stopped a fanfic author?

Some crucial dates have been altered slightly from the original both for historical accuracy and in an attempt to better make sense of Matsushita's own timeline.

* * *

In the days that followed, it came to light that money had not been as tight for the Tsuzuki family as its children were brought up to believe. Neither was it true that Asato's wealthy father had left them with nothing at all. It was only after his mother's passing that they learned the true sum of what he had left, and that amount was in fact a small fortune. This came as quite a surprise to Asato and his uncle, who had both clung to their respective disdain for Asato's father until his mother's will brought this new information to the surface; as well as to Ruka, whose memory of that man was little more than the nebulous, impressionistic memory of a six-year-old child.

According to the will, that sum was to become the sole property of Asato, and follow him to the house of his uncle into whose care he had been signed. After all, was his mother's logic, the money had once belonged to Asato's father and was given with the intent to support that child. Likewise, Ruka's inheritance was to come from her own father's legacy, from the late Mr Tsuzuki's government pension—which was very little indeed—and from her mother's most prized possessions, including her wedding gowns which she had safeguarded through every bump in the road in the unfulfilled hopes of seeing her daughter married within her lifetime.

As was Ruka's way, if this arrangement ever once struck her as unfair or unbalanced she never let on, for she never complained—though as far as Asato was concerned she would have been justified in doing so. He would have given her his inheritance himself if he were able, just to repay all she had done for him, and because he loved her. The money mattered little to him; with their mother gone, his older sister was all he had left in the world, and he hated more than anything to see her go, once again, to the tailor's in the city. No matter how many times she reassured him that she was a grown woman who could take care of her own, he worried about her when he could not watch over her, and despaired of her leaving him to fend for himself in the household of their uncle and his wife.

They saw each other sometimes, of course, Ruka and Asato, after he had moved into his uncle's house—a house the atmosphere of which was markedly different from that of his mother's. Asato's uncle and aunt were a modern couple, and their home and lifestyle reflected that. He was on his way to becoming the manager of a department store, and she kept abreast of the latest fashions. It seemed there was always some lady friend of hers over for afternoon tea, and whenever that happened, Asato was expected to stay out of sight.

It was more for his aunt's sake than for the sake of her friends, however, as on the rare occasion he ran into any of them, they would always comment on his good looks and humble manners, and all seemed to agree that he wore the latest fashions out of Europe for young men his age as though they had been made with him in mind.

It was enough to make a young man like Asato beam with pride—and at times like that it was easy to lose sight of the reality that his presence in that home was not as welcome as the kind words of a family friend might lead him to believe. His uncle's wife had never been as stern with him as his uncle had, so it came as a bit of a surprise to the boy when he overheard a conversation between the two about him some months into his stay.

"I can't take much more of this," Asato's aunt was saying, her voice hushed as she spoke with uncharacteristic frankness to her husband. "I thought it would be fine to be left alone in the house with him, but he gives me the creeps. He's so quiet when he comes home and . . . It's those eyes. Those eyes, they . . . I never know what he's thinking, what he's going to do. I wish they would let you come home earlier just so I wouldn't have to be alone with him for so long."

"Do you mean you're actually afraid he might do something to hurt you?" Asato's uncle asked incredulously. He might not have known Asato's character very well, nor cared to correct that, but apparently he thought he knew him well enough to wonder if his wife were even talking about the same boy. "Why? Has he said anything strange?"

"I guess not," his wife relented. "But haven't you noticed how people look at us differently ever since we took him in? Forget charity. It's almost like they think we're cursed or something. Even if they don't know he's a bastard child, they always have a way of asking about it anyway. 'Where'd he get eyes like that? Was his father a foreigner?' I can't keep avoiding the topic forever, you know!"

She lowered her voice. "I know most of the time people are just joking when they call him an ill omen, but I can't help beginning to wonder if there isn't some truth to it. Why else would they say something like that? I'm telling you, this isn't good for my health. He's caused me nothing but worry since he's been here. And how do you know it wasn't something to do with him that was to blame for your sister's illness? Damn this generosity of yours! I was fine when it was your mother living with us, but why did you have to take _him_ in? Not for her sake, I'm sure. For that inheritance of his? Because if that's the case then I wish you would hurry up and do something about it and end my misery! Why should _I_ have to put up with him? He isn't _my_ nephew—"

His aunt went suddenly silent. Asato could not see what was happening, but she must have put her hand over her mouth when she realized just what she had said. Asato himself had never heard his uncle's wife voice her feelings so openly or long-windedly before, and she was quick to apologize to her husband for it.

He waited for his uncle to refute her claims, tell her that he was not after Asato's money after all, that it was out of filial love and obligation to his sister that he had taken her son in, but that never happened. In any case, by the next spring they had solved his aunt's most pressing problem: they enrolled Asato in a preparatory middle and high school that was also a boarding school.

Perhaps it did cross Asato's mind that attending a boarding school was in some ways like being sent to an orphanage. For his uncle it was simply a way of dumping him in someone else's care far away from his own home; but Asato would have been foolish to wish to stay willingly in a household where he was not welcomed, and treated with an increasingly thinly veiled resentment, any longer. In this way he had no choice but to welcome the change and adapt. He had already lost everything that truly mattered to him with his mother's death the year before, anyway.

This new opportunity was, on the other hand, a kind of rebirth; and he, like a cicada coming out of the ground which had nurtured it in warm, dark comfort for so long, was ready to appreciate the world into which he had been thrust with a determination to endure. The boys who attended class with him were of like mind, and were willing to overlook shortcomings like strangely colored eyes or the lack of a father that would have earned him a good ribbing back at his old school in the country. Instead, they warmed to his fresh sense of humor that temporarily took their minds off their studies and problems at home; and even if Asato couldn't say he had any close friends, he filled a particular purpose for his peers, and in that sense he felt as though he belonged.

The other boys called him Tsuzuki, like the doctor had; and even though his aunt and uncle had often reminded him it was not his name—not by blood, at least, only legally—his peers said it with such fondness that it became his simply by the frequency of its usage. So it seemed in the boy's thirteenth year as though the life that was Asato's had been thoroughly put to rest, and the person who was Tsuzuki was just beginning to live.

—

There was little about life at that school that Tsuzuki could complain of. He was surrounded by boys his age who treated him, for once in his life, as if he belonged; the teachers were strict, but they were still rather preferable to his uncle and uncle's wife; and even though it was a school for boys, there was no shortage of local girls to tease as they passed by school grounds on their way to do shopping. Yet Tsuzuki too often found himself unable to concentrate on his studies and falling into a restless sort of ennui that none of his peers' games could alleviate. When the other boys teased one another about girls, his thoughts would return to Ruka, and he would miss her so much he ached inside.

Ruka did come to visit him on her holidays, however few and far between those were. She was not comfortable being around so many adolescent boys, Tsuzuki could see when she did brave the school grounds, her limbs and effects all held tightly to her person. She would often implore him as to why he did not return to their uncle's home more often, welcomed or not, so that she might visit him there instead; but both understood without need for words that even she would have returned to their relatives' home only reluctantly if their situations had been reversed.

Therefore, if only for his sake, she made the trip to the boarding school every few weeks on a Sunday, when its grounds were quieter and she could take Tsuzuki out for a short spell. Sometimes they went shopping in the city, and she would treat him to tea and a sweet dessert at one of the modern cafes that had sprung up all over downtown like so many mushrooms after a long rain. She did it not because she had the money to spare, but because she was his older sister and had the birthright to insist on making him happy. Other times, if the weather was particularly nice, they spent their day together at the zoo, or simply walking around a park or sitting side by side on a bench in some public place, watching people go by as they caught up on one another's lives.

If Ruka was in particularly high spirits, she took him to a dance hall, and taught him to dance in the modern, Western fashion. Tsuzuki never did figure out if she had been taught herself by a friend at her place of work or some other, nameless young man; but as he stumbled diligently through a waltz or polka, he had little time to be envious of his sister's other life, or else he risked ruining what bright happiness their rare outings together brought him.

It really didn't matter to him what they did with their time together. To Tsuzuki, the thrill was merely in seeing his sister's smiling face and knowing that she was doing well for herself after their mother's passing—that she was making a way for herself in this modern world even if hers was not an extraordinary life. Ruka had never been one for adventure or glamor; that was all Tsuzuki. Just like when he was a child, she seemed content to find her happiness through his, and discover the world through his discoveries.

At least, that was what the smile on her face wanted so badly to make him believe. It was not his place to question how genuine her cheerfulness was, or whether it was hiding a private life of hardships she wished not to trouble him with, or even one of joy she feared to share with him. Tsuzuki had only to accept it, and realize that those wide, dark eyes he had once thought so full of sorrow had not been made only for mourning or quiet acceptance, but for joy and wonder as well, such as those eyes had in the photograph she gave him when she first left home. Joy, gratitude, generosity and love—even if they were lying, he had only to accept what those eyes showed him as truth.

His classmates teased him good-naturedly about his dates with his sister, but that did not bother Tsuzuki as it might have once. They were probably just jealous that Ruka had eyes for only him when she came to school to collect him, and that not a word fell from her timid lips that was not directed to him. In any case, who was he to complain? Each time he was able to speak with the sister whom he loved more dearly than anyone or anything, face-to-face, was something to treasure, and could not be squandered with petty feelings of shame brought on by outsiders.

There was one summer day when he was fourteen that would forever remain clearest in Tsuzuki's memory. It was the only time he ever truly came close to reproducing in earnest that bright smile Ruka had shown the camera on the day she was photographed with that unknown male friend before the blooming cherry trees. It was on that day that he could remember enjoying himself the most with Ruka, and that was saying much.

He remembered that day so clearly as well, however, because it was the last time they ever went out together. In fact, it was the last day Tsuzuki would ever see his beloved sister.

The weather gave no premonition of such a fate, of course. It was a bright, warm day, the sky a cloudless blue with a gentle breeze carrying the song of the cicadas in the zelkova trees down every street.

Ruka was radiant. She had taken him to a fancier dance hall than usual for a treat, and though her hair may not have been done in the same contemporary style of the more fashionable young ladies present, and her dress was simpler and no doubt home-made, the ruffles on the shoulders more subdued than their company, to Tsuzuki there was not a more beautiful girl in the place.

They laughed as they twirled on the dance floor; and, perhaps owing to Tsuzuki's youth, no one interrupted them to take Ruka's hand. Under her tutelage, his dancing had improved, but never had he felt the freedom to lose himself on the floor—never had he felt that his feet and heart were in such harmony, or that he was right where he was meant to be, with Ruka's hand in his, her waist under his arm, and she smiling like the sun.

It was such a pleasant time, that Tsuzuki could hardly believe he was not dreaming when Ruka took him aside under the twilit summer sky and strings of golden, electric lanterns to say she would not be able to meet him like this much longer.

"Why not?" he demanded to know. "What's wrong? Is it because of the boys at school? Because I don't care—"

She shook her head sadly at him. "No, it has nothing to do with them."

"Your work, then? They don't approve of your spending time with me?"

"That isn't it—"

"Then _what_? Is there something wrong with me? I'm your brother, Ruka!"

He was only distantly aware that he was raising his voice when he saw the pained grimace on Ruka's face. It was only that he could not believe the words she was saying to him could be true. He could not believe that what perfection they had had was so fragile, those words were all it took to break it, and her reaction to his sudden outburst only made it worse. How was he supposed to feel? he wanted to ask her. She was the only family he had left. Did what her coworkers or these social people think of her mean more than her own brother's feelings?

She bit her lower lip, her hands tightening to fists in her lace gloves, and for once those eyes that, however full of sadness, had never shied away from him, refused to meet his gaze.

"I'm sorry, Asato," she said, and her voice sounded tiny, drowned out by the cries of the insects. "Please, I wish you wouldn't make this harder than it has to be. I only thought that it would be better if I told you now, because I didn't want you to think that I was abandoning you. But I'm not getting any younger, and you . . . You're growing up, you're becoming a fine gentleman, and you're getting too old for your only company to be your older sister—"

"Don't say that. I'll never be too old for you."

She smiled at that, and for a moment it was almost enough to make him think the whole confession had been a joke at his expense.

Until she said under her breath: "You sound like that man when you say that."

She never had to say so directly, but he knew from past experience that by "that man," she meant his father.

"Ruka—"

"We're both getting too old to rely on each other, Asato. You have your friends at school, and I have. . . ." She hesitated, but met his eyes boldly. "I have my own life to lead."

"But that doesn't mean I can't be a part of it. Does it? I thought we had something, just the two of us. Something special." Something precious, which he could never have with anyone else. Did she not see that?

"Of course we do," she said. "You're my little brother, and there isn't anyone else like you in the world. There never will be. That won't change no matter what happens. I'm not saying I don't want to see you again, Asato, or that I want to forget days like this that I got to spend together with you. I enjoyed our times like this, I really did. More than I can say. But, you see, it's because you _are_ my brother that things were bound to change eventually, and the sooner we get used to that fact, the better it will be for both of us."

The sooner _he_ got used to it, that was. Tsuzuki could see in her smile, however apologetic it may have been, how used to it she already was. Let me go, those eyes seemed to beg him, if you care about me half as much as you profess to. . . . But he just wasn't ready.

When he said nothing, she took it as a sign the matter was settled, and turned to go back inside and rejoin the other dancers.

And suddenly Tsuzuki knew he could not let her do it, or he would lose her forever. He grabbed hold of her wrist, and pulled her back to face him. Her cheek was soft and cool under his skin as he pressed his lips to it. He was taller than her now, if only by a few inches, so it was easy to do.

Easy, that was, but for the pounding of his own blood in his ears drowning out the playing of the orchestra inside. Easy but for the way Ruka stiffened in his hold, and the way her hair smelled when he breathed in telling him like nothing else could how wrong he was to kiss her, even like this, even though it felt so right, it felt like it wasn't enough. Anyone who happened to pass by them would think they were merely some ordinary young couple in love and never be the wiser, so there was no shame in holding on to Ruka like that, was there?

Maybe there wasn't, but he didn't want her to see the reddening of his cheeks anyway. Nor did he ever want to let her go. He pulled her into a tight embrace.

"Don't leave me, sister," he muttered next to her ear. "Please don't leave me all alone. I don't know what I'd do without you. I love you. Can't you see that? I love you more than anything in the world, Ruka."

Instead of returning his sentiments, however, she shuddered in his arms at those words, then struggled. Like a fish in a net she struggled, trying to free herself from his hold in any way she could.

Stunned by it, he let go.

He had not even the chance to apologize—he did not know what he had done that was even needing of an apology—before she covered her mouth with one gloved hand and ran in the direction of the street instead of the dance hall.

It was a long moment of disbelief before Tsuzuki recovered the wits to go after her, but by that time she was across the street and hailing a rickshaw driver.

"Ruka! Ruka, please come back!" he called out to her; but if she heard him she pretended not to, because she got into the seat and hastily gave the driver directions, and did not once look his way.

The street was not particularly busy at that time of the evening, even with the nightlife crowd and the automobiles of the wealthy passing slowly by; but something kept him from chasing after her, something he had merely glimpsed in her wet eyes before she ran away from him. Something he had felt in her shoulders as they trembled in his arms that had shamed him. Something that only made him realize as he was standing there on the side of the street that perhaps what he did had been wrong after all.

—

Several weeks later, Tsuzuki received a letter from his uncle informing him that Ruka was engaged to be married. He did not say to whom, only that a young man whom she was seeing had asked for her hand, promised to do right by her, and won her uncle's approval. Tsuzuki was left to wonder if it was the same young man who had been ripped from the photograph Ruka gave him years ago—the young man whose face he had never known, so had had no choice but to superimpose his own onto in his imagination.

He waited to receive more word on the matter, or an invitation to the wedding, but no letters came after that. From Ruka or their uncle. If she had married her beau, or if the engagement had fallen through, he never knew. He never got to see his older sister in their mother's old wedding kimono. Somehow even his imagination would not allow him to picture her in those white gowns and the bonnet and makeup that made any young woman look mature beyond her years and resigned to her fate.

To his mind it would have been the same as imagining her dead. He simply could not do it. He could not bear to think, even in his subconscious mind, that he had lost his sister—the last family he had left. Because that was what it amounted to.

And for that, he should never have kissed her. It was only after his rash reaction to her perfectly reasonable words that she had disappeared exactly as he feared she would, and it was only after that that he had received this letter about a marriage. Was it possible that she had rushed into the decision because of his behavior? That he had inadvertently pushed her into it because of the feelings he had confessed to her? If it were possible to undo what happened that summer evening, would he still see her walking down the school yard path this Sunday, come to take him to see the Tanibata fireworks? To light a lantern for their mother on the river at Obon?

He could punish himself for all that could have been—and that he did—but none of it would bring Ruka back to him. That was the truth that stood before Tsuzuki, waiting for him to accept it; but each time he told himself to stop living in the past, to do the mature and logical thing and let his sister go—they would see each other again eventually, they were family, they had to—a tiny force deep inside suddenly leaped forth and kept him hanging on to his memories a while longer. After all, Ruka always had been his strength. If he simply accepted what his uncle told him without any hope whatsoever, would that not be the same as giving up his faith in her—the same as giving up faith in her love for him, however different the nature of that love might have been from his? What would she think of him if she knew he had done that? Wouldn't she feel betrayed?

At times like those, Tsuzuki steeled his heart and reached for the photograph he kept of her—the one she had given him after ripping its other subject from the frame—now wrinkled by all the places he had hidden it away when he swore to never look at it again, and all the times he had hurried to pull it out just so he might be reminded that she existed. So that he might be reminded of what she looked like, and her wide, sorrowful eyes. . . .

That photograph became his secret shame. While other boys collected photographs of their sweethearts from back home or the entertainers they fancied at the moment, the young woman Tsuzuki cherished more than any other was his older sister—six years his senior and whom he had not seen in an increasing number of months, then years. It was her beautiful face he dreamed of, and her arms he wanted to lose himself in when loneliness and hardship set in the worst. Truly there could be nothing sinful in wanting that much. After all, were they not taught in school that it was a brother and sister whose love for one another had created the Japanese islands? Still, myth was a matter unto itself; and he dared not imagine what his peers would think if they found out about the photograph, though he assured himself that his thoughts about Ruka were pure—or, at least, purer than their thoughts about the subjects of their photographs—even if the fact did remain: he longed for her so much sometimes it felt as though his whole body, no, his whole being ached.

The only thing worse than missing her was the way in which he had betrayed her. That he wanted no one to ever discover. He would have wiped the whole incident from the universe's memory had he the power to do so.

The more time passed, the less Tsuzuki was even sure how it happened the way it did. Surely there was some key piece he was missing, something that he said or that had been in his eyes to upset her, because surely a mere kiss—and a chaste one at that—could not be powerful enough to make Ruka disappear, or make her never want to write to or visit him again. He began to fear he would never have another chance to ask her what had driven her away, or apologize for everything he had done. He did not even know where she worked, and he doubted very much he could trust his uncle and his wife to get a letter to Ruka for him.

Still, he had promised her once that he would make it all up to her and their mother one day, when he was through with college and had a respectable, well-paying job. That promise was little consolation to Tsuzuki those weeks during the height of his adolescence when Ruka's absence from his life was the hardest to bear; but it was enough of a reason to go on, this fragile bit of hope that one day Ruka might fall back into his life, and on that day he would be able to prove to her once and for all how much he loved her, and how sorry he was for all she had been made to suffer on his account. Maybe one day yet, he would still be able to make her happy.

In the meantime, he continued to visit those dance halls where she had taken him and waltzed with him once. He never saw her at any one of them—and that did not surprise him—but he allowed himself the impossible fantasy that maybe one day she would appear at the doors, as brilliant in her ball gown as that last afternoon, and everything that had come to stand between them would be torn down and forgotten. The last few months, or years, would melt away, and things would be like they always were between them, if not better.

He vowed to be ready for her whenever that day came.

—

"Tsuzuki! Here you are!"

He looked up just in time to see a young woman in a pale, peach dress bouncing toward him, before she hooked an arm around his, grabbed it tight in the other, and was dragging him to another part of the hall with the excuse, "There's some people you just have to meet."

She introduced him to a couple of the university's juniors, two young men with drinks in hand and not a wrinkle in their formal suits whom half the ball's attendees were greeting as they came in as lords, if only in jest. This young woman on his arm was one of the exceptions, but her smile was especially bright and her gestures especially enthusiastic as she said to them, "Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you Mr Tsuzuki Asato, the best ballroom dancer in the country."

He shook the hands offered him, even if eyebrows went up in incredulity. One of the young men, Iwase, said, "Is that so?"

Which made Tsuzuki blush. "I wouldn't say that, Motoko—"

"Oh, don't be modest," the girl called Motoko said with a wave. "You boys have some stiff competition, so it's only right you take him under your wing, you hear?"

"Aye-aye," the other, Yoshikawa, saluted her. "You brought him to the right place. We aren't called the Yaji and Kita of Messiah College for nothing—"

"Sure," Motoko teased, "they couldn't find two bigger buffoons to fit the bill."

It was the Christian Messiah College that Tsuzuki had chosen for his higher education when he finished high school. There was a movement underway in Japan's cities, led by foreign and homegrown preachers both who had found a following with the younger generations born in the Meiji era, coming of age in the Taisho, to whom their spirited, pentecostal methods and message of forgiveness and love held great appeal. Tsuzuki could not deny that he admired those who exhibited such fervor in their belief, but he had other reasons for choosing the school.

He lacked the grades and the social status that would have helped him enter a public university, but that school was happy enough to take his money whether he professed to share the Christian faith or not. With any luck, the administration no doubt felt, that would change once he had lived and studied for a time in their hospitable and pious atmosphere: eventually, through the examples of his peers and professors, he would come to see the peace and salvation offered by an acceptance of Jesus Christ for himself.

It was not as though Tsuzuki had a faith to call his own already. And the stories he heard in the masses he was required to attend did resonate with him, even if he could not be sure he got the meaning out of them he was supposed to. It wasn't in the singing of hymns or in the sign of the cross, or in the homilies that constantly appealed to the community's financial charity. Rather, he was drawn to the miracle stories and the Christ's compassionate words, as they seemed to him to echo what he had always felt in his heart but could never find the right words to explain. Like what his doctor friend had preached to him in his rose garden, about the kind of man he wanted to be as a physician: comforting others and healing their ails. If that was all it took to be a Christian, then Tsuzuki felt like he was one already, however much the university's staff was fond of reminding him otherwise.

If the school portrayed itself as a place of academic piety, however, some of its most prominent students—Tsuzuki quickly learned—were about as far removed from monks as one could be. Yoshikawa had a reputation among the other students as something of a rogue, Iwase as a flaming socialist, and both were quick to congratulate Tsuzuki when he caught the attention of yet another young attendee of the fairer sex he knew from his dance hall days; but somehow none of these qualities detracted from their status as exemplary models for respectable Christian values for the incoming freshmen.

"Like shepherds to the spring lambs," Yoshikawa joked as he put a flute of champagne in Tsuzuki's hand.

As if to illustrate, when Iwase joined them again he was herding a rather timid-looking freshman under one arm, who was dressed more for the road than the formal ocassion. "Brothers," he said to them, "I want you all to meet K, who—believe it or not—just got into town this past hour. How's that for timing?"

"Don't you think you're cutting it close?" said Yoshikawa.

"The train I was supposed to take up from the country encountered some delays, that's why I'm so late getting settled in," said the newcomer. "The rest of my luggage isn't expected to arrive until tomorrow yet."

"Ah, then you can stay with me if you need a place to put yourself up for a couple nights, and rent a futon in the meantime."

"Thank you, Sempai. That's rather generous." For someone who had all but professed himself a country bumpkin, the young man who called himself K spoke with a refined restraint that was, among present company, refreshingly urbane and modest. "I appreciate your looking out for me," he went on, "but it looks like I'll be staying in a room with . . . one moment, let me see. . . ." The young man fished a folded piece of paper from his pocket and read: "A Mr Tsuzuki Asato—"

Their companions laughed; but not before Tsuzuki jumped, nearly spilling his drink over all of them, to exclaim, "That's me!"

He wasn't sure, but the look that automatically crossed the other's face before he squelched it seemed to be one of horror.

Then he blinked, put the card away, and extended a hand. "Well, then, Mr Tsuzuki, please treat me well. I am in your care."

Tsuzuki, of course, was quick to wave off his formality, even as he vigorously shook that hand. After all, he said, they were newcomers to the school together, no matter which of them arrived first. Inside, however, he could not but admit that he felt humbled by this young man.

Perhaps it was ironic given his own most prominent feature, but even while as decades went by Tsuzuki would quickly forget his face, what struck him most about K at their first meeting were his eyes, which for a young man of university age were wide and deep, and always brutally honest—even when K turned them away at their upperclassmen's jesting and tried not to betray his veneer of seriousness with a smile. Perhaps in that way, he reminded Tsuzuki a bit of someone else, someone who had been dear to him long ago. Perhaps it was because of that that he put forth the effort with K that he did.

Whichever the case, he knew instantly that he could always trust those eyes to tell him the truth, and because of it he yearned to pull K out of his shell, to see what new jealously guarded layer of the young man's identity would be revealed there at each turn.

As though he were aware of that desire—and of their upperclassmen's uncannily strong propensity to cause a distraction—K kept his nose stubbornly to his studies almost day in and out; yet Tsuzuki was glad to notice that his roommate appeared to be as uncomfortable in mass as he was, even refraining from singing the hymns, either because he did not know them or was too shy to raise his voice. Tsuzuki knew his own wasn't anything to be proud of, but his gentle nudging only seemed to make K retreat further inside himself.

Which was puzzling to him. Tsuzuki was used to his charisma having the opposite effect—cajoling others into taking the chances they might otherwise hesitate to take—so as a result, K seemed to him a singular and enigmatic person indeed. But, as was simply his nature, Tsuzuki would not allow himself to rest until he had discovered what it was that made this young man the way he was.

—

"Come on, Tsuzuki—is that the best you can do? My grandmother could drive faster than this."

"I hope those words taste good, 'cause you know I'm gonna make you eat 'em."

"That right?"

Tsuzuki just laughed at the challenge and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. The car responded by tilting dangerously on its axles, and making his friends grab hold of whatever part of the car was closest as they were thrown to the left side of the vehicle, the one who had issued the challenge gripping his hat in his free hand before it could fly away from him. For a moment even Tsuzuki feared the front wheel was going to come off the road; but the motorcar evened itself out again and he stepped on the gas, sending them soaring forward on the dirt road to a chorus of relieved whoops and hollers.

K's voice alone cut crystal clear through the wind: "Tsuzuki, you jackass!"

A brief glance over his shoulder was all Tsuzuki could spare, but it was long enough to see the young man holding on for dear life in the back seat. Somehow even then, he thought he caught a glimmer of excitement in K's voice as well, a nervous twitter of laughter as he added, "You trying to kill us _and_ the motorcar?"

Yoshikawa laughed aloud. "Nah, just us, I'm afraid. 'Cause if he hurts this car, we're all dead anyway."

Somehow, though, even he didn't seem too worried, despite the car being on loan for the day from his uncle. It might have been more out of envy that he teased Tsuzuki, because when his own turn came to drive, he was unable to let loose like his younger friend, though he was sure to use a concern for others' property as an excuse for his conservative driving. He had much more practice at the wheel as well, and by the time he was back behind it, some of the adrenaline raised by Tsuzuki's driving had worked its way out of the foursome's systems.

Once in the backseat with K, Tsuzuki leaned back and enjoyed the feel of the wind through his hair, the sunlight beating warm against his closed eyelids when they passed out of the shadows of trees. They were still soaring down the dirt path at what most would consider a breakneck speed, but their upperclassmen handled the bumps and turns in the road with such seeming effortlessness that neither could bring himself to remain on edge.

Tsuzuki turned his head to glance at K, who was facing the other way, watching the suburban landscape pass them by. His friend sat straighter in the seat, his straw boater held firmly on his lap and the wind hardly ruffing his slicked hair or the lapels of his buttoned summer suit. Why he agreed to come out with them when he seemed to be enjoying himself so little was a mystery to Tsuzuki; until K happened to turn his way and, catching Tsuzuki staring at him, smiled in return. K's lips barely moved, but his dark eyes scrunched up, and it was not just from the sun. No longer did Tsuzuki care about his motives—nor his happiness, if he were honest. It was enough to have that gentle, contemplative smile given to him alone; and with the rumble of the engine and the vibration of the road passing swiftly beneath them, it made his heart soar in his chest as though he were a dragonfly humming along above the motorcar, riding its wake.

The four of them had skipped Sunday mass to come out here for a drive outside the city. It was the perfect day for it: the sky was a pearly blue, the May air heavy and warm as though in preview of the summer rains. Only when they were driving could they rustle up a cooling wind. There was a small lake on their way back into town where they stopped to while away the afternoon. Children floated toy boats on the water's edge, and modern girls with ankles gleefully exposed sat fanning themselves under the shade of the trees. Yoshikawa and Iwase joked in low voices and whistled popular tunes now and then, trying to catch their attention, but never garnering anything more than a suspicious glance. Tiring of that, they loosened their collars, rolled up their shirtsleeves, and improvised a game of baseball, cajoling Tsuzuki to join them and trusting their shed jackets to K, who could not be moved from his spot at the foot of a cherry tree even for wont of trying.

He watched them for a short while, eventually pulling out a small book and pen. Whenever Tsuzuki glanced over at him, he looked like he was asleep under the brim of his boater, but for the infrequent, lazy turn of a page.

When Tsuzuki could stand it no longer, he excused himself from his friends and, with two bottles of soda procured from a nearby vendor, returned to K's side.

It was a moment before his friend noticed he was standing there and looked up, and when he did his gaze went from the proffered soda bottle to Tsuzuki. "You know I don't like sweet things."

"I know," Tsuzuki said. "But you must be feeling the heat over here, even if you are just sitting still."

K did not refute that. He smiled bashfully and took the bottle with a small, "Thanks." He was in shirtsleeves himself and the side of his neck glistened even under the shade of his hat and the cherry's wide leaves, so he was not shy about taking a generous swig of soda.

Tsuzuki settled down on the grass, stretching out on his side beside him. "So. What are you reading that you can't be bothered for a game of ball, on this your Sunday off?"

"English poetry. Milton, to be exact." K glanced at him. "Are you familiar with him?"

"The only English I know is Sherlock Holmes," Tsuzuki teased him with a bashful grin. K smiled but did not laugh. "Why're you studying on a day like this?"

"It's not for class. This is one of the great classics of modern English literature. You know, Soseki was a student of the English poets," K said with more conviction to Tsuzuki's skeptical hum.

"Yeah, and look how depressing his stories were."

K glared. "You have no idea, do you? Here:

"'Freely they stood who stood,'" he quoted softly, whether Tsuzuki wanted to hear or not— "'and fell who fell.

-

_"Not free, what proof could they have given sincere  
Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love,  
Where only what they needs must do, appear'd;  
Not what they would? What praise could they receive?  
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,  
When will and reason (reason also is choice)  
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd,  
Made passive both, had serv'd necessity,  
Not me?. . ."_

-

The lines had been translated, but even though the language was Japanese, the structure was old enough Tsuzuki wasn't sure he understood them at first hearing. But something in the passage spoke to him anyway; even if he could not explain what it meant if his life depended on it, even if he could not pinpoint its exact source in any one phrase, he felt the anguish in that passage nonetheless.

At the same time, his stubborn smile and the blue of the sky sparkling through the tree's leaves would not allow it to sink in, as though he had experienced a revelation and forgotten it completely at the same time.

"That's beautiful," he said. "Now, what does it mean?"

K sighed as though in impatience, but Tsuzuki could see that it had little if anything to do with Tsuzuki's question.

"I think what it means is that faith which is given without free will—that's given out of fear, or blind devotion, or is demanded of tyranny—means nothing. What's important is not that that kind of faith isn't deserved, but that the one who gives it is able to persevere through everything that stands in his way, everything that tells him to give up, in order to love something that, for all he knows, might not even care, simply because it's right.

"But more than that, what I think it means is that we have no one to blame for what becomes of us but ourselves and our own actions. 'The mind is its own place,' Milton writes before that, 'and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'"

The smile did not leave Tsuzuki even as K's meaning sank in, but now he truly felt its fragility. It felt as though K had spoken to his very soul, and unwittingly at that. Unaware that he had been staring himself, the words slipped from Tsuzuki's lips before he could think about what he was saying: "See? That's why you make a much better student than I ever will."

K started and lowered his head. "I wouldn't say that. Not at all."

Those words came like a warning—careful, Tsuzuki, you don't know about that which you speak—and he took it to heart, chiding his friend instead that their conversation was turning much too dark for that sort of day.

"Well, then, how do you propose we spend it? Other than playing baseball, that is."

"I don't know. I used to spend days like this trying to catch tadpoles in the lake—"

K laughed at him for that, and Tsuzuki glared back. But his friend could not be pressed for an explanation when Tsuzuki wanted to know what about what he'd said was so amusing.

"Come on," he said suddenly, jumping back to his feet. "Let's take a walk."

K sobered. "What about Iwase-sempai and—"

"They can look after themselves."

Besides, he wanted to be somewhere alone with K, away from the eyes of the Sunday crowd. He couldn't really explain the sudden urge himself. It was not as though they didn't spend enough time alone in their shared room, with their respective studies, but there was something about the two of them being surrounded by nature that brought something out of K the university dormitory could not, like that elusive garden of Eden.

And perhaps that—Tsuzuki thought, as he paid K back by excitedly pointing out the various birds that populated the park by their calls—was precisely the key to unlocking his friend's true nature that he had been searching for. Nor was he about to give it up once so newly found.

—

It seemed to Tsuzuki that some of his worst memories were made during the summer. It was during its rains that his mother had passed away—as well as B, heralding the abuse by his schoolmates that seemed to dominate the memories he still fought to bury of that part of his life.

But it was also the season in which he had made the most wonderful discoveries. Summer was when, as a child, he had watched the cicadas emerge from their old exoskeletons, growing before his eyes on the tree trunks they clung to as they dried their wings in the shade and sang the song of their birth. He met Dr H in the summer, when his roses were in their most glorious period of bloom. And it was during that time six years before when he had been struck with the realization of just how precious Ruka's beauty was to him, and the tumult of longing and melancholy that his heretofore pure love had been thrown into, like the thick August air, made him dizzy.

The summer of 1918 promised to be no different.

Whether it was driving lessons in the country or weekend trips to the beach, or simply relaxing in the shade of their dorm rooms, trying in vain to beat back the muggy air with paper fans, Tsuzuki felt himself intoxicated by the freedom of university life. And by youth, and the simple pleasures that were allowed a young man and his friends in this new era had they simply some looks and some money. Some charm and a little sense of worldliness didn't hurt matters any, either. It came at just a small pittance, an hour every Sunday at church services, followed by a half hour of paying his dues to the nice Christian ladies who smiled at him over their homemade cakes and tea, and whose attentions he and his classmates would tease one another about later.

That summer, at the sudden advent of its heat in the first days of June, a noh stage was set up in the park and the students skipped classes to go down and see the full day's sequence of plays. An auspicious performance about a goddess started them off, followed by some histories; but it was the evening's last couple of plays that Tsuzuki and K looked forward to the most as they sat together in the cheap seats. The ending play, dubbed the demon play, was always the most interesting, with the action and drama sufficient to capture a university student's imagination, and short attention span.

However, Tsuzuki could not help noticing with some disappointment how the demons whom these plays concerned never attained enlightenment like those ghosts of men and women who appeared in the performances before them. Their stories ended without resolution, with the demons merely retreating, momentarily defeated, to rest for a few centuries before some new band of monks would be required to placate their renewed ire. Surely as time went on, so did that mode of existence grow increasingly unbearable, being shunned and subdued era after era without even the small grace of being allowed to die and be reborn. Given that, could anyone really blame the demons for the destruction they caused?

The drums and cries of the orchestra, the shrill anti-melody of the flute, accentuated its pain as the lead actor performed a terrifyingly graceful dance about the stage.

But not before K could whisper in Tsuzuki's ear, "Do you know why they always use a pine tree for the background?"

He was not the type to interrupt a live performance of any kind, so just hearing his voice was enough to break Tsuzuki out of the trance he had been lulled into and turn his gaze to the painted wood carving of a pine tree that stood behind the orchestra. The gold leaf on its trunk shimmered in the flickering torchlight—or in the smile that was apparent in K's low voice at his ear; he could not be sure which. Only that its irony struck him as insensitive to the demon's plight at first; and then the warmth of his friend's breath on his neck distracted him from even that.

"Because," K said when he was silent, his voice dropping even lower and more intimate, "it's always in season. The pine tree never changes, but is always faithful."

That one word rang out in Tsuzuki's mind over the actor's voice: faithful. Despite the warmth of the evening, he felt a shiver run down his spine. Surely, he thought, the intimacy he imagined in his friend's voice was unintentional—a coincidence, or a side effect of his efforts not to interrupt anyone else's experience. The two of them had grown increasingly closer, but surely it was wrong to think this was a sign that K returned his affection—an affection Tsuzuki himself did not even know how to describe or catalog.

He refrained from leaning in toward his friend in kind. Whatever K's motive had been in giving him that bit of information, and no matter how easy it would be to slip a hand between them to rest on an elbow, now was not the time, nor were they in the place for Tsuzuki to respond in such a way that might jeopardize the camaraderie they shared, even if they were the only two who would notice. Even if only to acknowledge K's words—words which he only seemed to feel free to utter under the cover of night. That pine tree may have been faithful, but its existence was no doubt a fragile one, perched on the edge of some cliff or mountain where winds had twisted it into its tortured shape. It had survived so much, but, like the proverbial straw on the camel's back, who knew how little might be required to destroy it.

There were those muggy afternoons, close quarters made even closer with the shades drawn and fat raindrops drumming on the roof, they would pass the time discussing the social lives of their dormmates, when it seemed in hindsight to be inevitable that the conversation would eventually turn to themselves. In truth, neither of them particularly cared about whom whoever was seeing at the moment; but they found themselves discussing it nonetheless, repeating hearsay passed along by the likes of Iwase or Yoshikawa, as though in doing so they might banish that particular responsibility of young, modern men from their own blissfully uncomplicated lives.

So-and-so's parents were trying to match him with the daughter of an old samurai family, and So-and-so couldn't stop rubbing it in like she would make the perfect wife, even though everyone knew she was somewhat lacking in domesticity. They could hardly imagine themselves married at their age, though supposed it was a sign of the times that no one cared they weren't tied down, or at least betrothed, already. These days it was almost expected of a young man—or even a young lady—to shop around before committing, like Such-and-such, who was spending his good time and money seeing some _moga_—a modern girl—who was a Christian to boot. Word had it she kissed like one, too. "If you'll pardon the pun."

"What do you mean?"

"'Oh then dear saint, let lips do as hands do'?"

K merely stared at him blankly.

"_Romeo and Juliet_? Come on, I thought you were the big English poetry enthusiast." Tsuzuki looked at him incredulously, but there was a certain facetiousness to his smile. And it was not because his friend had missed the reference, either.

"Usually something has to make sense first for it to be called a pun," K said, "and two, show clever usage and _understanding_ of the language."

"Or maybe," Tsuzuki teased, "you're just sore because you've never kissed a girl."

K's smile dropped; and Tsuzuki had to admit, it was not as though his comment were called for. "And I'm sure you would be the expert on that subject."

"Well, I do have plenty of experience." It might not have been the exact truth—he never said whom with or where, or how seriously—but then, truth was not Tsuzuki's original intention.

But instead of firing back with some witty comment, or calling Tsuzuki's bluff, like any of their other classmates might have done, K simply lowered his eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Tsuzuki said, laughing, and gave K, who was sitting on the floor with his books, a shove. He had not been paying attention, however, and lost balance, falling onto his back with Tsuzuki above him teasing him with his bright smile. "Someone with your looks? There must be dozens of girls in this city who'd fall for you in a heartbeat, what with those big eyes of yours, if you just turned on the charm. But then, you've probably never even noticed how they stare, have you, Mr Oblivious?"

"You wouldn't know—"

"Do you even know how to go about it?"

When K blushed, Tsuzuki backtracked: "Look, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have given you such a hard time if I had thought it would bother you so much. It's not that big a deal, you know. Honestly. I can even show you, if you like, just to prove it."

K swallowed visibly at that, but he suppressed whatever fear may have been in him the next moment as he pushed himself up, leaning back on his hands under Tsuzuki's suddenly challenging stare. The quiet "What, now?" slipped out before either seemed to have realized what he had said.

Tsuzuki shrugged carelessly, but his smile wavered. "Sure. If that's what you want."

If he were honest, though, he didn't really care whether that was what K wanted or not. In the back of his mind he knew it was probably stupid, but he had something to prove—or disprove, either to himself or K; he couldn't be sure which—and the awkwardness of their positions was not enough to stop Tsuzuki from leaning in toward his friend. He deliberated over what to do before finally placing a hand on the nape of K's neck. "You have to be still, all right?" he murmured, shifting himself closer. Wetting his lip with his tongue in nervous preparation before realizing that might not have been the most considerate thing to do.

K, who was determined to be scientific, did as told. "All right."

"Tilt your head a little . . . like this." The words sounded strange to Tsuzuki's ears as he guided K where he wanted him, and felt even stranger in his mouth, like they were coming from someone else, or as if someone else had taken over his body. It was all just stalling, until he could work up his nerve to finish what he had recklessly started, but it made him more nervous than not. He said more for his own sake than K's: "You can close your eyes if it makes it easier."

But K's remained wide open. They only fluttered a bit and lowered when Tsuzuki finally leaned in, and softly touched their lips together.

His friend froze under the kiss, but only momentarily, and he did not pull away as Tsuzuki half feared, half hoped he might. It was an alien sensation to him, like kissing Ruka's cheek—and not because it felt wrong. It was simply different from all those kisses he had lain on the backs of young ladies' hands at one function or another, different too from the pecks they had stolen when he wasn't prepared. Rather, it reached down into the pit of him, down into who he was—a sensation which was frightening and exhilarating at the same time, and made it all the more jarring when he felt K's fingers tentatively grace the side of his face.

He's only doing it to make a fool of me, Tsuzuki told himself instinctively; he doesn't mean anything more by it than if this were a lab exercise. But even as that thought wormed itself into his mind, his lips tingled and his limbs felt warm like they only did when he had too much to drink.

It was at recognizing that that Tsuzuki pulled himself away.

"You'll have to learn to loosen up if you ever hope to get anywhere," he said in the same teasing tone of voice as before; but it felt like the only one he was kidding was himself.

"I'm sorry. I suppose I'll improve with practice," K said with equal sarcasm, turning back to his studies.

And Tsuzuki followed it through with what was perhaps an unnecessarily cruel, "You do realize that means you need to make an actual effort," grinning as he pushed himself off the floor and to his feet.

He was too distracted by how the soft and silent pressure of his friend's lips against his had felt and how best not to show it to concentrate on his own studies, however. And he certainly had too much on his mind to notice that, despite the weather, K was trembling.

—

The timing was too good for Tsuzuki not to suspect that what happened in their room that afternoon was not at least partially to blame for K's melancholy in the weeks to follow. He began to fear that he had overstepped the invisible boundary laid between them; but he could not apologize for doing so without reminding K of it again. No matter how much he now regretted the consequences of his actions, he could not bring himself to do that much. Even if only to explain his pure intentions. It seemed now that what he had taken for a deeper bond between them might have been little more than his wishful thinking from the beginning, little more than the yearning every individual has in his heart to find another who truly understands his soul; and perhaps out of fear of being confronted with reality, Tsuzuki was especially careful now about what he said to K, lest his one close friend abandon him as had so many others.

He only found out he need not have worried when K asked if Tsuzuki would join him on summer holiday in his hometown.

"That is," he added when he caught the surprise on Tsuzuki's face, "if you didn't already have plans—"

"No, not at all." There was no need for him to explain he didn't have any family to visit himself; K already knew that much. "I mean, I would love to see the town where you grew up. It's been too long since I've seen the countryside at all. But you're sure I won't be a nuisance?"

"On the contrary," K said, to his amazement. "My family would like to meet you. I've told them all about how you've looked after me these past months, and I think they'd like to thank you for it in person. I'm sorry, but it seems I'm putting you in something of a spot by saying that, aren't I?"

"Not at all," Tsuzuki assured him once again.

He was relieved to think now that K's dark mood must have been the result of homesickness rather than anxiety about their friendship, and he felt he would be a fool to decline the offer. It was in K's character not to outwardly show his pleasure or displeasure much at all, but as the train they took to his hometown drew gradually closer to its destination, his smile grew in tandem. With every landmark they passed that was familiar to him, his eyes sparkled in a way that Tsuzuki found irresistible.

In linen summer suits and ties, their hair slicked back and shoes freshly polished, they sat across from each other with the window open to the breeze, talking and laughing about nothing important and simply enjoying one another's company. In Tsuzuki's humble opinion, there could not have been another two people on the train that day who were having as much fun as they were. It was a side to K he had never seen before, one that K seemed loath to show their mutual friends, but Tsuzuki found himself only falling more for his character because of it.

When the train pulled into the small country station, their time alone together came to an end when a young woman in kimono spotted them and waved, calling K's name.

"Your mother told me you were coming in today, so she sent me to greet you in her place," the young woman said when she had joined them. She turned her bright smile to Tsuzuki. "She said you were bringing a friend along with you. Is this him?"

"Ah. . . ." K looked down at the platform in sudden shyness. "This is Tsuzuki, my good friend from university. Tsuzuki, my cousin—"

"You can call me Ayame."

If K was taken aback by her forwardness toward Tsuzuki at all, he did not show it. "A pleasure, Miss Ayame," Tsuzuki said when it seemed it would be all right to do so, and bowed his head with a hand to his breast.

His manner took the young woman somewhat aback, and she blushed; but it was K's gaze she appeared awkward to meet when she offered—to his quick refusal—to help him with his luggage. As Tsuzuki followed behind them down the dusty road, listening to Ayame press K for details about the city, he was left with an impression that the relationship between the two could not be so easily summed up as one of extended family; but he did not press his friend on the matter, seeing as it was K's business and none of his.

Tsuzuki had no time to dwell on the matter in any case when they arrived at their destination. K's family's home was a large one, and Tsuzuki could not be sure why that surprised him. It would make sense for them to have some money if they were able to send their son to a private university, but K had never acted with the same superfluous air of some of their other wealthy schoolmates; in fact, at times he had seemed to Tsuzuki as humble and poor of spirit as Christ himself.

It was clear now where he got it. His mother and two younger sisters were most accepting of Tsuzuki, expressing their excitement to meet him after K's glowing letters, nor were they disappointed; and his father, though nearly as reserved as K, was quick to give him a pat on the back in gratitude for Tsuzuki's looking out for his son, making certain his sake cup at dinner was never empty. Tsuzuki was not used to such hospitality, but somehow he remembered his manners, even when they complimented him on them and remarked with fondness how he reminded them of one of K's older brothers, who had left some years before to go on a mission to Korea. Not once did anyone mention his unusual eyes, though he noticed the youngest girl staring at him across her dinner—and felt Ayame's curious gaze on him every now and then as well.

Then again, K turned to him just as often, sometimes a lopsided smile on his lips in embarrassment for something his mother said, but mostly with pride for the young man he was able to call his good friend.

They laughed about it that night when the household had gone to bed, when they lay in their futons laid out beside one another in the room K had shared years ago with his brothers. K teased him for drinking like a fish that night, and Tsuzuki grumbled in jest that maybe he would not have if K's father hadn't kept refilling his cup. "I couldn't very well refuse. That would be rude."

"Then don't complain to me if you're hungover in the morning, idiot."

He said so in jest, but maybe there was some truth to it, as Tsuzuki was unable to find a sufficient retort. Nor was it particularly easy to rustle up his usual wit with the crickets making their ruckus under the floorboards and his head feeling buoyant as a cloud, drifting where it would and unable to settle down on any one concrete thought.

"What about your family, Tsuzuki?"

K cocked his head as he said it, an uncharacteristically laid-back look to him as he lay propped up on one elbow, the coverlet nudged aside from the heat and the fan temporarily still at his side. "I mean, I know from what you've told me that they're no longer around," he said when he remembered his place, "but you've never told me what they were like. I've always wondered where you got that sense of humor of yours, that . . . good-naturedness that seems to follow you around everywhere like you had the sun on your shoulders."

"It's always been a mystery to me, too," Tsuzuki said with a chuckle; but he indulged his friend nonetheless, while K listened rapt and without judgment, nodding occasionally in silence.

Surprisingly, it was easy to talk about his mother and Ruka once Tsuzuki got started. He had thought for so many years that to speak of them would only bring him pain, or else would be too private to entrust to another living soul, so he had kept that part of himself under careful lock and key in fear of that pain; but the reality felt so different. If any part of it were painful, it was only the realization that he missed them, and that he was powerless to change that; but having K hear as much was better than keeping it to himself, like a balm to an ache he had too long learned to ignore.

He even told K about his father—if only repeating the stories his mother told him as a child—whom he had never discussed with anyone since he was a small boy too curious yet to care what others thought of him. He left out the guilt he still felt sometimes about his mother's death, and how he had estranged Ruka from himself; but about the rest, he found himself speaking with a candor that surprised even himself, but that he could not regret when he glanced over and saw the understanding in K's eyes.

When at last Tsuzuki trailed off, feeling suddenly exhausted, and the cries of the crickets filled the space between them, K let out a breath as though he had been holding it that whole time.

"What?" Tsuzuki asked him, unable to help his rising discomfort. "Don't you have anything to say?"

"'Under your guidance, whatever remains of our ancient wickedness, once done away with, shall free the earth from its incessant fear.'"

Tsuzuki was not sure what he had expected of his friend—judgment, perhaps, for one—but that was certainly not it. "Is that more of your English poets?" he slurred.

"Latin. Virgil." K looked down with a sudden bashfulness, as though this past hour he had been the one laying open his soul instead of Tsuzuki. "It's what my brother would tell me in times of doubt, as if to assure me, _this hardship too shall pass_. I think he was talking about a savior, but lying here listening to you speak tonight, I wonder if it might be more personal than that."

But K had it backwards, Tsuzuki thought.

Tsuzuki had done nothing but talk. Rather, it was as though K could peer into his soul, and see the memories of Ruka and of the Tokyo doctor that resided there—the memories of those who had calmed the darkness that resided deep inside him, whenever it raised its head from its fitful slumber. It had been so long since he had a voice like that to guide him through his darkness, like a faithful shepherd, that he failed to notice the difference anymore.

Until now. Until he felt that incessant something, that ancient something, quelled by the blue sky and clean air of the country, and by K's words, which fell upon him again like a gentle caress.

"What is it about you, Tsuzuki," K asked him in a whisper on the edge of his fading consciousness, "that makes me feel like I'm somebody else—somebody better?"

—

They spent those long summer days strolling the surrounding area, aimlessly following the paths that wound out through the rice fields, along the raised edges of irrigation ditches and down to the river, or up into the wooded hills with their half-forgotten shrines and moss-covered old mileposts, absently kicking stones down the dirt path and getting dust on their good leather shoes, talking endlessly about whichever subjects sprang to mind, or else simply enjoying one another's presence in close, sacred silence.

It seemed some days as though they spent every minute together; and what few were not spent in K's company, it was his younger sisters who occupied Tsuzuki's time, or else Ayame, whose appearances at the house seemed to be becoming more and more frequent. Tsuzuki was quick to joke about it on one of their long walks, saying it must have been that she missed K so much she was doing everything in her power to maximize the time they were together before he went back to the city. "It's refreshing to see cousins so close like that."

"Who, Ayame? Oh. . . ." K looked down at his feet. "I should have been more specific before. We're only cousins by marriage. She and I are supposed to be betrothed, actually."

"Supposed to be? You don't sound very enthusiastic about it."

Tsuzuki laughed lightly, but by the look on his friend's face, it had not been the best course of action. When he thought about it, there must have been a good reason K hadn't mentioned it before. "It isn't that. It's just . . . Well, it was arranged when we were just young kids, and things have changed since those days. We've both . . ."

He looked up, but quickly looked away again when he caught Tsuzuki's eye.

"We've both grown up quite a bit since then."

Well, that was a given, Tsuzuki wanted to say. It seemed from his friend's tone of voice that there was more to it than that, but he held his tongue and was content to let the matter drop when K changed the subject to something more trivial.

It did put his friend's behavior that night when Ayame once again joined them for dinner into a new perspective, even if he could not quite grasp what that perspective was supposed to be. When he was awakened during the night it was with the feeling that K was wide awake beside him, though Tsuzuki could not be certain this was the case with his friend facing the other way and breathing regularly. It was only a feeling he had, and he repressed the instinctive urge to reach out and ask K the matter. Perhaps, on a level he was not entirely aware of, he knew it was best to simply leave these things be.

Perhaps, too, K's restlessness had something to do with the village's summer festival, which was only days away, and which had dominated Ayame's talk that night at dinner. Tsuzuki looked forward to it with a childlike anticipation, as he had not been to a summer festival in the country in almost a decade. And besides, what he did remember of his own town's festivals was clouded by the hostility of his childhood peers, which had not allowed him to let his guard down enough to enjoy himself properly.

But for whatever reason, and in a way Tsuzuki could not quite explain, it felt as though the air between himself and K was fast turning as chilly as it had been leading up to their holiday, if not even colder. When he would casually ask K whether there was a problem, however, his friend responded as if he had no idea why there should be.

Yet Tsuzuki doubted K could really be so oblivious to his own behavior. At school, he was conscious of himself almost to a fault, and would never have chastised the older of his sisters for the questions she asked innocently of Tsuzuki, let alone allowed himself to stare so openly as he now did across the table, or the space between their futons at night when he could not get to sleep. Perhaps it was the looming return to university that weighed on K's mind, Tsuzuki told himself, and that would not allow him to enjoy what little time they had left there while they still had it. "You're going to get ulcers if you keep worrying like this," the older of his sisters would tell him. "Do you really want that at your age?" To which K would just straighten himself and pretend he did not know what she was talking about.

But he could not hide it from his friend.

He opted to stay home from the festival preparations despite Tsuzuki and Ayame's strong urging he join them, claiming a pounding headache that wouldn't let him out in the sun. It was all Tsuzuki could do not to call his bluff. But knowing K—as the young woman confided in Tsuzuki as they worked—he would have denied that there was any underlying cause to his fit of melancholy. Apparently he had always been like that.

Tsuzuki couldn't speak to that, but he was determined to get to the bottom of it. So he asked his friend that evening outright, "Do you not want me here?"

K looked horrified as he glanced up from the book he was reading. "Of course I do. I wouldn't have invited you to come with me if I didn't. Why, what makes you say that?"

Because you don't act like it, Tsuzuki thought, but said instead, "Never mind. Come on." And he reached down and pulled K upright by the arm away from his books. "You're not spending the night at home, I don't care what disease you claim you have this time."

"Don't bother. Just . . . go on without me, Tsuzuki. I'll only get in the way. I never have any fun at these sorts of things."

"Liar. Anyone can enjoy himself if he just gives it a chance."

"Well, I'm not getting dressed up," his friend said adamantly, as though that would settle the matter.

"That doesn't matter. Neither am I." In their trousers and shirtsleeves, they might have stood out among the other villagers, and been less comfortable in the heat of the August evening than they would be in yukata, but that didn't matter to Tsuzuki as long as his friend was there with him. "Come _on_, I'm tired of your excuses. Everyone's expecting you to be there. Ayame's wearing flowers in her hair just for you. . . ."

He hooked an arm around K's midsection once he had him half off the floor, tightly gripping his waist, which was feverishly warm from the day's heat beneath his cotton shirt. Pulling the young man's arm around his own shoulders, he hoisted K the rest of the way up and would have carried him like that all the way to the festival if K had not decided right then that he could stand well enough on his own feet.

He jerked himself away, covering the unusual violence of his actions with a grab for his summer jacket.

"All right," he muttered, "I'll go for a little while if it makes you happy. But you owe me one for this, Tsuzuki."

"We'll see about that." With any luck, Tsuzuki thought, K would recant by the end of the evening.

He still somehow managed to engage K in racing him part of the way to the festival grounds. Once there, surrounded by the wonderful aromas of the food, and the drums beating in time with the cries of the singers and with his pounding heart, it was easy for Tsuzuki to lose himself in the simple pleasure of K's company. And, after losing so many games only to hear K laughing at him for it at his back, Tsuzuki began to suspect, much to his relief, that the reverse was true as well. Just to see K smile again like he had on the train, without any thought for what those around him might think, to see his wide eyes shining in the light of the paper lanterns that bobbed in the breeze over their heads, was plenty reward for the slight trouble in getting him there.

During moments like that, Tsuzuki hardly even noticed the others who passed in and out of their conversations over the course of the evening. He felt as though he had gained something back he had almost forgotten he'd lost; and at the time, he thought that if he grabbed hold of it now, it would last forever.

They parted ways at some point after sundown—sometime after Tsuzuki's sixth skewer of dango and K's beating him royally at a kiosk game of archery—and Tsuzuki took his moment of solitude to wander the outskirts of the festival. Fireflies flitted among the trees just out of the way of the crowds, katydids crying from the grass. The local shrine, decorated for the celebration, was quiet but for the sleepy few who occupied its benches; and Tsuzuki was compelled, as he gazed at its simple solidity, to give a prayer of thanks for what he had enjoyed during his stay to the local deity.

He was just about to return to the crowd when someone latched onto his arm and pressed close.

Tsuzuki laughed, surprised that his friend would be brazen enough to do something like that around so many people, but he was not about to complain. "Hey, K—"

"Shh. Tsuzuki, it's me."

He started at the unexpected voice, and the slim figure of a young woman in summer robes who materialized out of the shadow of the backs of the kiosks. "Ayame? What are you doing back here?"

"Don't tell K," she said sheepishly—yet without any doubt or hesitation, "but I had to tell you while I had the chance. I don't know if I'll ever get another one like it. Tsuzuki, I think I'm in love with you."

Tsuzuki forced a laugh. Surely he had heard wrong. He had just met the girl not even two weeks before, not nearly enough time for feelings such as those to develop, let alone when he had done nothing to encourage them. How could he, even if he had been attracted to her, when her hand already belonged to his one dearest friend? "But your engagement—"

"Who told you about that?" For a moment, her voice wavered in uncertainty. Then, "No. No, I don't want to call it off. It just means too much to our families, so I couldn't . . . But this is something else entirely. I didn't plan for it. I would be happy being K's wife, but you see, that's exactly why he can't know. Besides," she added, almost accusingly, "you wouldn't want to jeopardize your friendship either, would you?"

"Jeopardize it with what?" The smile remained stubbornly on his lips as he said it, a flimsy shield against the answer he wasn't sure he wanted to hear. "Come on, stop joking around. I know you don't really love me. How could you? You hardly know me."

"I know enough to know how I feel. And how you look at me, with those beautiful eyes, the way you smile back. . . . I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. I care about K, I really do, and it's not like I wanted to betray my feelings for him, but I couldn't help that very much, now, could I? You know what it would do to him if he found out his fiancee and his best friend—"

"Ayame, stop and think about this. You haven't even heard my side."

"I don't need to."

"Don't you think you're getting ahead of yourself—"

Before he could finish, however, she hooked a hand around the nape of his neck, and was raising herself up on tiptoes to meet his lips.

Her flesh was cool against his, but her slight body was warm and soft through her summer robe, the scent of the lilies she wore in her hair cloyingly sweet. Tsuzuki could have melted in her embrace if it were only that; but the memory of how K had looked down at the dirt of the road when he spoke candidly of this girl, the way he had allowed Tsuzuki to kiss him in their room back at university, perhaps even then imagining Tsuzuki were someone else, someone like Ayame. . . . His sudden shame upon remembering these things would not let him remain passive.

He pulled back, unhooking her arm from around his shoulders despite her reluctance to let him go.

"I can't," he told her, gripping a shoulder strongly in each hand when she began to protest—just hoping it might make her see his sense. "You know I can't allow you to do this. I can't do that to K."

A sound like the scuffing of gravel made them both turn, only to see K standing in the shadow, watching them, still as a statue.

Ayame gasped and spun away from them. It must have hit her all at once, that what she had envisioned for her future was over before it could ever begin, dashed like a vase to ground that could never be put back together. But, really, what had she expected? It was not as though Tsuzuki hadn't warned her, nor was it in his nature to simply let things stand without an explanation.

"K—" he began, letting go of his grip on Ayame.

But his friend would not listen. He backed away, then turned and started purposefully down the road away from them and the festivities.

—

"K—wait a minute. . . . Would you please stop and listen to me?"

They were nearly back at his home, the loud music and voices of the festival left far behind them, before K finally turned and acknowledged Tsuzuki. When he did, there were tears in his eyes—tears of anger and betrayal—neither of which Tsuzuki could say were undeserved after what he did.

"So you can tell me what, hm?" he shouted with an agony and force of conviction Tsuzuki had never before witnessed from his friend. "For God's sake, Tsuzuki, what other explanation could there be? I saw it plainly enough with my own eyes." He forced a laugh. "'Plenty of experience,' you said. I was so naive, thinking you were just kidding around. But _Ayame_, Tsuzuki? After I told you she was my _fiancee_, after I _confided_ in you—"

"Listen to me—" He made to grab hold of his friend's sleeve, but K jerked himself away as though Tsuzuki would burn him, a horror-stricken look upon his face that pained Tsuzuki to see like little else could. "I didn't mean for that to happen. She just kissed me before I could stop her, and I didn't know what to do—"

"Right. And I'm supposed to believe that?"

"Yes! Damn it, it's the truth! When have I ever lied to you?"

K turned away from him again, shaking his head, and disappeared around the side of the nearest house in a huff, so that Tsuzuki had to hurry to catch up with him as he tried to reason with him:

"You can blame me all you want. I should have seen it coming, I should have been more observant, but I wasn't, for whatever reason. Maybe I didn't want to see it. But that's no excuse. Don't think I wouldn't take it all back if I could, in a heartbeat. You're my dearest friend, and I would never dream of doing anything to hurt you. Please, you have to believe me. I'm begging your forgiveness, K! I don't want anything to change between us—"

"Then, am I also supposed to believe Ayame just couldn't help herself? That this is just the effect you have on people?"

Then it was Tsuzuki's turn to be confused. He stopped in his tracks and stared, finding nothing to say in response, which only seemed to anger K more.

He strode back over to Tsuzuki when he saw him like that, and Tsuzuki would not have been surprised in the least if his friend had tried to hit him. He would have deserved it, and K's demeanor certainly threatened something violent.

Instead, he half sobbed, half shouted: "I invited you on this trip because I needed you here with me. I need that so much, Tsuzuki. I don't understand what it is you do to me, but sometimes it feels like you're the only thing making this life bearable. Ever since I met you I've wanted to trust you, to be able to be myself with you—Christ, Tsuzuki, I've _treasured_ your friendship since the first day I knew you—and now you do this to me? I . . . I don't know how to take it! Did this thing between us ever mean anything, or was it all some cruel joke to you from the start? Do you have any idea how much it hurts? Do you even have the faintest idea how much it kills me just being around you?"

His words washed over Tsuzuki like a tide, too much for him to take in at once, to make sense out of. "I-I'm sorry, K," he said, "but I don't think I understand what you're talking about."

"Oh, I'm sure you don't. That's just the way you are, isn't it? You make people think you fancy them, and then you stab them in the back when it suits you—"

"Look, what happened with her . . . I don't care a whit about Ayame—"

"I'm not talking about Ayame!"

Tsuzuki could only blink. If she wasn't at the crux of their argument, then what was it about?

When he could think of nothing to say, K just shook his head, as though Tsuzuki had already proven his point for him. "Never mind," he muttered, his voice trembling. "I told you it would be a mistake to drag me out tonight. You should have just let me be. Just . . . forget it. Forget I ever said anything, and just forget about me. I want you out of my house in the morning—"

It was not something he could easily explain, but the utter finality of his words suddenly frightened Tsuzuki so much that he feared for his friend. What he had done to K to make him act this way, he did not know, but it had nothing to do with anything at the festival. All at once K seemed to him like water slipping through his fingers; and in his desperation to salvage any part of what they had only hours ago, Tsuzuki reached out in order to force K to face him.

He felt K jump beneath his touch, and then there was a flash through the dark as the young man spun to defend himself.

When he was facing Tsuzuki again, it was with the blade of a scythe hovering between them, snatched from where some neighbor had left it after coming in from the fields. Tsuzuki knew not to be fooled by the way the moonlight shone so dully on its worn surface: it could still cut him with ease if he made one wrong move.

"Just stay away from me!" K swallowed hard, slowly backing away toward the lee of the house. "I mean it. Don't come near me, don't touch me, don't even speak to me. I'm through with it, Tsuzuki, with you, with all of this _nonsense_—"

"Let's be reasonable—"

"_Reasonable?_ You want reason, then you explain it! Please explain it to me, because I'm tired of trying to understand why you make me feel the way I do. What is it you want from me?"

Tsuzuki started, as if the blade had already sunk into him, just left of center. What did he want, besides K's trust and companionship back? For those honest eyes to show true happiness again? For his friend to love him as much as Tsuzuki loved him, as much as he had loved Ruka—was there anything so wrong in wanting that?

"I love you. You're my dearest friend and I don't want to lose you."

The words slipped out as naturally as thinking them, and they did not sound wrong or complicated to Tsuzuki's ears, even if he could not say the same for K.

Who gritted his teeth in his confliction. "Can't you see? That's just the problem—"

"Why? Because it's wrong? What could be more natural than wanting to be beside the one person who means more to you than anything in the world? You said you need me, K," Tsuzuki tried, "well, I need you too. That faith you always spoke of . . . Maybe I don't deserve it, but I would do anything you asked me to just to have that back. We can go back to the way things were. I promise you, nothing has to change if we don't want it to. Our friendship doesn't have to end because of this."

He might as well have been speaking to his sister. Those were the words he should have said to her all those years ago; perhaps if he had, she would never have left him without a word. If only he had been able to make her see there was nothing abnormal about the nature of his love, nothing frightening about its intensity.

He saw the uncertainty in K's eyes and knew that, weak though his argument might have been—and so wholly dependent on faith—there was a truth to it that neither of them really wanted to deny.

All at once, the scythe's blade that hovered between them was too much for Tsuzuki to ignore. He couldn't be sure which of them K's desperation posed a greater danger to—Tsuzuki or himself—but he could not allow it to remain between them, one way or another. A loud crack split the air as the first of that night's fireworks was lit, and K turned toward it instinctively, his eyes wild in the flash of light. It was then that Tsuzuki saw his chance, and he lunged forward to grab the scythe from K's hands.

It should have been a simple thing to do. Nothing Tsuzuki could have foreseen told him otherwise. He did not expect K to hold on to the scythe as tightly as he did, or for him to fight Tsuzuki for control. He did not take into account the utter dark of the shadows between the houses, nor how quickly mistakes could happen. He could make out nothing in the dark but the white of K's collar against his pale throat, the only sound over the crack of the fireworks the frantic scuffing of their shoes in the dust. It didn't occur to him that there was something gravely wrong until he heard the choked grunt at his ear.

K's grip loosened on the blade's handle, and Tsuzuki used the chance to pull it away, not expecting the wet resistance he encountered when he did, or that K would crumple and collapse as soon as he let go.

He fell to his side on the dirt walk, gasping feebly, and the wan moonlight illuminated then what Tsuzuki could not see before. A thin red trickle ran from the corner of his mouth, and further down, beneath his summer jacket, his white shirt front was stained dark with blood.

Tsuzuki dropped to his knees, the scythe forgotten in the dust. His hands trembled something awful and he cursed at what he saw before some instinct kicked in and made him press both hands to the wound. K moaned when he did so, a wet, inhuman sound that drew incoherent apologies like Hail Marys from Tsuzuki's own lips. Nothing he did appeared to do any good. He couldn't see the wound, but he knew it was deep, and in a bad place. More blood welled up, squeezing out between his fingers at the pressure he applied, making Tsuzuki blanch and curse as he never had cause to before—but, damn it, he had only been trying to help, this wasn't supposed to happen, and there was no way he should have been bleeding so much so fast, how was Tsuzuki supposed to make everything all right like he'd promised K if he didn't have the time to take it back?

Someone was calling K's name—someone, Tsuzuki realized belatedly, besides himself. He recognized Ayame's voice, and her shuffling footsteps as she hurried in the direction they had gone.

"Over here!" The words tore themselves from Tsuzuki's throat, even if he couldn't tear his eyes away from the blood, just hoping she would be able to follow his voice. "Hurry, we're over here! Come on, please, hurry!"

"Tsuzuki?" She sounded wary even as she rounded the corner. "What's wrong? What are you—"

Her question broke off in a sob as she saw, and both hands flew to her mouth to hold back a scream.

"He needs help, bad—now—please, call for a doctor or _something_—"

Whether it was to follow his order or not, she fled the scene, running back toward the festivities as though her life were at stake. Tsuzuki could not dismiss the abject horror he had witnessed in her eyes, nor the fact that part of it had been directed at him. It chilled him to the bone, and he could only hope that his pleas for help had been heard.

As the light show continued, oblivious to what had happened, Tsuzuki peeled off his jacket, bundled it up, and pressed it hard to K's chest in what seemed like a futile effort to keep what blood he had left in. It felt like forever had passed before he finally saw the lanterns bobbing through the night toward them. But his relief that help had at last arrived was short lived when the group summoned by Ayame's cries were able to grasp the situation for themselves.

They set down the lanterns with such haste they nearly dropped them, throwing themselves to their knees beside K.

"He's cut deep. This is a lot of blood. . . ."

"What happened here? How long has he been like this?"

"Answer the question, lad!"

Tsuzuki suddenly found he couldn't find the words with which to do so. He wanted so much to explain to them all that it was an accident, a horrible horrible accident that wasn't meant to turn out this way, but his tongue just sat in his mouth, refusing to work. Their questions came too fast, running together like a blur in his mind, like some other language he couldn't understand. He hadn't the strength to resist when a couple of men hauled him roughly to his feet and out of the way. Others pulled open K's shirt, the woman who knelt over him pressing her sleeve over her mouth and turning her head, uttering a string of _nenbutsu_ under her breath. Tsuzuki knew they were only there to help, but they weren't doing _anything_, and only seemed to him like so many ants, like crows swarming over his friend's body, that he wanted nothing more than to scatter away, to preserve what dignity K had left.

He didn't hear the words that pronounced the young man dead. He didn't hear K's mother's screams when she arrived to find her son covered in blood—and Tsuzuki just standing there, smeared in it up to the elbows, the blade that did the deed lying in the dust at his feet. The blood pounded in his ears, rising in volume with each boom and blast of light in the sky to the point of drowning out all other sounds around him, and he could do nothing but stand and stare, growing increasingly numb to his surroundings, retreating further into himself.

Then he felt it, deep down within: the first stirrings, murmurings, of that thing within him. . . .

That thing which had not raised its head since he was a young child, when it made him kill that boy and he had sworn never to let it awaken ever again. He could hear it accusing him from within his self now—in K's mother's voice as she screamed and shouted at him in her grief, as the villagers around her put the pieces together for themselves, and turned to him with eyes that seemed to look down into his very soul:

You did this, they said. You killed him. It was your fault. To think he trusted you—to think we all trusted you—and you murdered him—you monster, you murdered him. You _demon_. . . .

Yes, a demon. An abomination. That's what I am, isn't it?

He could feel it, his true nature, coiling ice-cold inside him as he stared down at the lifeless body of the friend he had loved and betrayed—and at his blood, running out and soaking his shirt and the earth on which he lay like there was no end to it, running out over everything, over everyone, out to the periphery of Tsuzuki's vision where it crept in upon him, to reap what a lifetime of sin, a life of sinful existence, had sown. . . .

They were going to kill him. Tsuzuki caught it in their voices, in the iron grips of the men still holding his arms, forcing him to his knees in their outrage with what he had done. He didn't have to answer for himself. They all knew what he did, accident or no. Arresting him wasn't justice enough for what he had done, even if these were civilized times. He was a monster, wasn't he? And a monster could not be allowed to live.

It was chaos all around Tsuzuki, but he alone remained cool and calm as he glanced around at the townspeople in their uproar, his mind busy forming his plan of escape. He had already failed K—K who had trusted him more than he ever deserved—so what else was there to save now but himself, even if he did not deserve to live?

In the blink of an eye the scythe was back in his hand, and the men who were restraining him fell to the ground. They did not see their ends coming as he slashed out at them with the blade already stained with his friend's blood, then moved on to the others who stood closest by.

Some of those ran. Most just let him cut them down, staring at him with eyes wide in disbelief, as though certain that some ounce of sanity within him would stay his hand at the last second, convinced to the end he was more civilized than this. For that they had only themselves to blame. Could they not see that there was no more sanity left within him? It died with K—that is, if it had ever been there to begin with, and if it had not been merely an illusion, an act he put on to convince himself he wasn't really this _thing_, this monster who couldn't help himself, who felt exhilaration and purpose as he swung the scythe, as he cut into their flesh, who reveled in the delicate beauty in the splash pattern of their blood, and saw absolution in the ablution of their life.

It made Tsuzuki feel ill—the gore that surrounded him, the sweet-copper smell of it, the strange joy he received from ending another life, the evil that he knew that was—all of it made him want to retch, and yet he could not stop himself. He had become an observer in his own body. His limbs moved as though with a will of their own, to a tune that told him this was only right, it was what he had been _made for_, and he could find neither the strength nor the reason to refute it any longer. He abhorred himself for it, but he could not disagree with the voice inside that whispered, This must be done.

Someone knocked over one of the lanterns as they fled, and as it went up in flame, the dry weeds that were near it caught fire and passed it quickly on. It spread to the house beside him, lapping eagerly at the sliding doors like dry kindling. The pools of blood shimmered like spilled ink in the flickering golden light, and if he had been able to see himself, he would have found eyes as crimson as blood and crazed as a starved lion's staring back at him. More townspeople would be coming for him in good time, more souls to feed the darkness that was fast uncoiling itself from within him—if they did not take him down first. He knew they would try.

Through the roar of the fire in his ears now he could begin to make out the distant screams, the moans of the injured scattered around him. The ringing of a bell, but he might have imagined that. In this dry heat, it was only a matter of time before the flames leaped to the next house over, and the next. . . .

Let them all burn, every last one, he murmured to the sky. Or the thing inside him did. He could not be sure anymore where one ended and the other began. What did it really matter? If it was going to end at all, this was how it had to be: the world consumed in fire.

—

Tsuzuki had not seen the house in six long years, but it looked the same as he remembered it. Nothing had changed.

Nor was he quite sure how he came to be there. The last hours—or were they days? yes, most likely days, but he honestly couldn't remember—were a blur. A kaleidescope of dark shape and shadows. The flicker of flames across the exposed beams of a once thatched-roofed house . . . or was it the flicker of the sun through the trees? He couldn't say. He really couldn't say. He couldn't even explain how he'd walked up this road when he hardly had the strength left to stand. His ears were ringing with an echoing din that wouldn't leave him be, like so many cicadas, crying out in agony, splitting apart, splitting his mind, like so many dying screams—

He shook them from his head. None of that mattered now. He was here, he was finally here.

He slipped inside the gate and knocked on the front door of the house. After a moment, he heard a man's voice moving closer from inside.

His uncle opened the door. He recoiled when he saw the man on his doorstep, unable to help the automatic response. "Can . . . can I help you?"

Tsuzuki tried to look past his shoulder. He didn't remember his uncle seeming so small, but he was still blocking Tsuzuki's view of the house's interior. "Where is she?"

"Where is who? I don't know who you are or what you're talking about, but I'm going to call the police—"

"You know who I mean." He had to speak quickly, he didn't have time to waste. "Where's Ruka? Where's my sister?"

His uncle started then, and, despite his revulsion, leaned forward, searching for Tsuzuki's eyes beneath his tousled hair.

Their violet shade was unmistakable.

"Asato?" The name was hardly a whisper from the man's lips. It was as if he couldn't believe his own eyes—or didn't want to. "What the hell's happened to you? Why are you covered in blood?"

Was he? Tsuzuki blinked down at himself, but he couldn't remember how he got the stains that covered his sleeves, and the front of his shirt, and the knees of his trousers. . . . Or maybe he did. He felt like it would come to him if he just tried to remember, but it hurt too much when he did that so he stopped. Was it his blood, or someone else's?

It didn't matter. "I said, where's Ruka? Ruka!" He stumbled into the household.

At first his uncle reached out a hand to steady Tsuzuki, but he quickly thought better of it and, horrified, tried to flatten himself against the door jamb instead until the other had passed. The last thing he wanted was his estranged nephew barging into his home without any warning, covered in blood and clearly more than half out of his wits, but what could he do? Force him out? That would involve touching him. Try to reason with him? It looked like a hopeless cause. Better to let him rant until he wore himself down and could be handed over to the authorities.

"Ruka!" Tsuzuki continued to call out as he traipsed into the hallway, dirt and caked blood smearing on the hardwood floor wherever he stepped. "_Sister?_ Where are you?"

Startled by the noise, his wife came into the hall investigate. Her mouth flew open in a silent scream when she saw Tsuzuki, and she backed away when the young man's violet eyes alit on her.

"Go and get a policeman," his uncle told her, and tried again: "Asato! Asato, listen to me. If you do not control yourself and leave our house, I am going to have you arrested—"

"Where's my sister?" The words were gritted out through his teeth now, his weird eyes full of tears that mixed with the dirt and gore on his face so that it looked like he was crying blood. It shook his uncle to his soul, and a very real terror rose within him when Tsuzuki grabbed both his arms. His grip was heavy, as though the earth itself were trying to pull him down and it was taking all his energy to resist. "Why are you keeping her from me?" he sobbed. "Where is she?"

"She's dead." His uncle was only too relieved to say the words, in his anger and disgust. "She died three years ago."

"No. . . ." Tsuzuki's grip tightened.

"Call the police," his uncle told his wife, panic fueling his words now; but to his frustration she continued to just stand there in shock.

Tsuzuki shook his head, grimacing. He looked to his uncle as though he believed if he only expended enough effort, he could keep the truth out. "No, you're lying. . . . She can't be . . . I would have known. Someone would have sent word, I would have felt it—"

"We never told you because she wanted nothing more to do with you! You're such an abomination, Asato, your own sister couldn't stand the sight of you—of being seen with you!"

It was his uncle's wife who had spoken, the woman who had resented his presence in her household from the beginning when he was young and orphaned. They were not words his uncle was proud of hearing, but they were the truth, and had been waiting far too many years to be said that in the end it didn't matter who said them.

A strange, keening moan like that of a beaten dog escaped Tsuzuki, and he pressed his hands over his ears and collapsed to his knees on the floor. His whole body convulsed as though he were going to be sick, but it was just as likely he was about to weep. His uncle didn't really care which. He had had to suffer enough on account of this bastard child over the years, first with the loss of his own sister, then his niece. If he hadn't put him in a boarding school all those years ago, who knew what the boy would have done to his household as well. And while it was disgusting to see a grown man acting in this way, he could not say he felt sorry for him at all.

"It was consumption," Tsuzuki's uncle told him as he sat like that, and not without his own bitter note of regret, "just like her mother. I can take you to her gravestone if you still don't believe me."

Tsuzuki showed no sign of having acknowledged that, only made himself even smaller on the hallway floor.

There was nothing his uncle could say that would force him to accept reality. That much the man could see. He shook his head, letting out his breath and putting a hand on his pocket watch for comfort. He told the young man in the frankest terms possible: "Look, Asato, what your aunt said is correct. Ruka did not want to contact you, so we thought it would be best if we continued to honor her wishes and not tell you of her passing. You can hate us for it as much as you want, swear you don't believe it, but none of that is going to bring her back, so you might as well accept the facts as they stand. As far as I can see, you've only brought this on yourself. I don't know what you did to make Ruka want to forget you even existed, but now that I see you here like this—showing up unannounced, covered in blood—I really cannot say that I blame her."

And with that, he strode past Tsuzuki's huddled form to the telephone on the hallway table, startling his wife out of her trance as he did so. If she would not do it, he would just have to call for a police officer himself. His nephew was so out of it from whatever mess he had come here from, the man doubted it would be any trouble at all to have him taken into custody. Where they took him from there . . . he only hoped it was far away from here.

He did not think there was any harm in turning his back on Tsuzuki in the state he was in, but that was where he was gravely mistaken.

—

When Dr Muraki Yukitaka saw the young man covered in blood on the front step of his clinic, his first instinct was to find the source of his bleeding and stop it.

He rushed the young man to an operating room, had him sedated when he put up a fight that threatened to hurt the nurses, and stripped him of his dirtied and torn clothes to better see his wounds.

But none appeared.

No matter, Yukitaka thought. It must have been someone else's blood the young man's clothes had been soaked in. Whether that made him a murderer or a victim of hapless circumstance, he could not know until the man was awake and lucid enough to speak. So until then, he was given a clean robe and a bed, and his few personal effects were examined for any clue as to his identity. Like his injuries, however, there was none.

When the stranger had regained consciousness, Yukitaka went to talk to him. A nurse had brought the man food and water, but both remained untouched on the table beside his bed. No doubt he was troubled by whatever he had witnessed before coming to the clinic, and so for that Yukitaka could not blame him for having no appetite or resisting the efforts of strangers who were only trying to help him. The man was sitting up in his bed, staring blankly out the window, and it was only after some persistence that the doctor was able to get his attention.

"What's your name?" he asked.

But the young man would not answer the question.

"Do you remember who you are?"

The young man mouthed something inaudible, but it did not look like a name. Come to think of it, he may have been simply testing his mouth to see if it still worked.

"All right. We'll come back to that later. Do you know where you are?"

"At a clinic . . ." His voice was quiet, broken and wavering, a ghost of what it once must have been. "A clinic in Tokyo. . . ." He knew which one precisely.

It took Yukitaka slightly aback. He could remember the name of the clinic but not his own? "Yes. . . . If you know that much, then can you tell me how you came to be here?"

"Don't know. Walked, I guess. Where is Dr H?"

"You walked. I see." It sounded like a lie. "And nobody stopped you or tried to help you?"

"Why would they . . . ?"

"You were . . . drenched in blood. You don't remember?"

The young man looked down at himself, at his spotless hospital gown, knitting his brow in confusion.

"How did you know where to go?"

"I have to see Dr H." The young man looked up at Yukitaka then, and the doctor was struck by the color of his eyes under the sunlight: the clearest amethyst purple. He must not have noticed before in his haste to help the young man, but there was something inexplicably unnatural about their color, impossible. Yukitaka jerked back involuntarily, and the eyes followed him. "I came to see him," the young man said. "Where is he?"

Yukitaka swallowed, and cleared his throat. "Why do you need to see him?"

"Because. . . . He can help me."

"I can help you."

"No. . . ."

"Yes, I can, if you just help me to understand a few things. Tell me what happened to you. Who brought you here? How did you get to be covered in blood when there's not a scratch on you?"

"Please. I need to talk to him."

"Was there someone else injured besides you? Did you hurt someone?"

"Where is Dr H? I need to talk to him! This is his clinic! Why won't you let me talk to him?"

His outburst was sudden—undoubtedly the other patients could hear his shouting down the hall—but just as short lived. Yukitaka sighed. The young man would not appreciate what he had to say. "This is my clinic. I've been in charge of it for a couple of years now. If you're referring to the doctor who ran it before that, I'm afraid he passed away before I came here."

The young man mouthed his words, _passed away_, back like a silent echo. He looked away, saying nothing, but something seemed to crumple inside him, as though beneath a heavy curtain coming down.

"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that," Yukitaka tried, a little gentler this time. Bedside manner was not one of his strong suits, but he desperately needed information from this young man—anything to indicate what kind of person he was, and what had happened to him. "Now, I'm going to ask you again, and please think hard about this. I know it may be difficult or even painful for you to remember, but I need to know your name. Can you give me that much? Can you tell me where you come from? Whom should I contact about you?"

Perhaps it was all too much too fast. The young man did not answer him. Not then, nor when Yukitaka tried to rephrase his questions a little later. For reasons unknown to him, it seemed as though the young man had made a decision, conscious or otherwise, to completely shut down, and nothing Yukitaka tried would make him change his mind.

—

With a resigned sigh, Yukitaka left the patient's name on the chart as "unknown." That was a good word to describe most of him: his history, his place of birth, his social status. His reason for coming to this clinic covered in someone else's blood.

His age Yukitaka judged to be eighteen or nineteen. He might have been off the mark in that estimate, but he doubted it. He was in good health, trim, a little on the light side but still within the healthy range of weight for his frame. His complexion was fair, his hair a fine dark brown cut in the modern fashion. His body and facial features were symmetrical and well-proportioned. Yukitaka could find none of the usual, only too human flaws when he examined the patient in full: no old scars or signs of broken bones, and hardly any moles. He was, if the doctor allowed himself to be subjective, exceedingly handsome. Some might even say a classic example of male beauty. In fact, his perfection was as close to divine as a human being could get.

Which only made his mysterious ailment all the more puzzling, as Yukitaka could find nothing at all physically wrong with him.

Nothing, that was, except for his eyes, which were a brilliant purple—clear as cut amethyst, yet deep as a sea of Burgundy. They had to be an aberration, the result of some sort of mutation that was unique in recorded medicine. No human had ever been known to possess eyes that color; and as far as he knew, it was just as rare in the animal kingdom. In fact, only the demons of legends had purple eyes. Yet for all their unnaturalness, they attracted Yukitaka to their depths on an intellectual level, stoking his desire as a scientist and a doctor to explain what he did not understand.

On a more human, aesthetic level as well, he felt himself pulled into those eyes by the pain he saw in them—nebulous and unfathomable, yet strangely beautiful in their inner tragedy. Whatever those eyes saw as they stared vacantly at the clinic's ceiling or at the tiny garden outside the window, Yukitaka was not sure he wanted to know.

And yet his curiosity about the young man would not let him rest.

Perhaps it was fate, then, when he opened his newspaper the next day to glimpse the headline buried in one of the back pages. Police were searching for the individual who had brutally attacked a local businessman and his wife in their modest home. There was no sign of forced entry, as though the perpetrator had been invited in, but the deceased had no living family to speak of, and thus far examination of their contacts in the community had turned up no possible suspects.

Yukitaka studied what few details they released about the manner of the couple's murder; and vague though it was to protect the public's sensibilities, it was apparent that whoever committed the crime would not have come away from such a barbaric act without some blood on his person. Not only that, but the date of the double murder was the same day the mysterious young man had shown up on his clinic's porch, and Yukitaka was too much a man of method to believe in mere coincidences.

Rather than turn the young man over to the police, however, he decided to try and ask his patient directly.

"Can you read?" he asked the young man the next time he appeared to be responsive, giving the nurse who was unsuccessfully trying to coax him to eat a much-needed break.

The young man turned those strange purple eyes to look at him, and Yukitaka had no choice but to take the acknowledgment as an affirmation.

He put the paper before the patient, with the article about the murdered couple front and center.

"Do you know anything about this?"

The young man stared at the paper for a long period of time, in silence, during which time he appeared to in fact be reading. But as the silence drew on, and the young man showed no reaction to the article whatsoever, Yukitaka began to have his doubts.

He lowered his voice to a murmur, and told the patient: "The police won't say as much, but it's obvious the man who did this must have been covered in blood when he left the scene of the crime. Was it their blood you had on you when you came to us the other day? Were you responsible?"

The young man said nothing.

"Did you kill those people?"

Again, silence.

Nor could Yukitaka take his lack of reaction as either denial or an admission of guilt. In fact, the longer the patient stared blankly at the paper, the more it seemed as though, to him, Yukitaka simply wasn't there.

The doctor thought of threatening him with the possibility of life in prison, if not a death by hanging, but he doubted it would garner any more reaction than his present tactics. Furthermore, he found he really did not care whether the young man was guilty. He had no intention of turning him over to the police one way or another. As a doctor, Muraki Yukitaka felt a calling to help this young man, rather than send him to a sure death. Besides, he was not only clearly sick—mentally or otherwise—but also such a strange specimen of a man that Yukitaka could not conscionably hand him over to the authorities, knowing what they would do to him, and lose what he was already beginning to suspect was a biologically unique individual.

For the meantime, though, he knew he had to have patience. Perhaps as the days wore on, the answers he sought would all be revealed in their own due time.

—

It wasn't deja vu. Yukitaka had in fact seen this scene before, three times a day for a little over a week. Once again, the tray of food that had gone into the unknown patient's room a few hours before came back out utterly untouched.

"Mrs Tsuchiya," he stopped the nurse who was carrying the tray away, "how long has it been since that patient's eaten anything?"

"I've been bringing him his meals every day," she told him with an exasperated sigh, "and every single time I've taken it back away like this. I never see him touch any of it. In fact, I honestly can't say whether he's eaten anything since he's been here."

"How can that be possible?"

"In my opinion, Doctor? Maybe he's trying to starve himself to death."

Yukitaka quickly dismissed the idea. Not because he thought it was truly out of the question. The simple fact of the matter was, he was a doctor. He had vowed to save that young man when he came to this clinic; it was the duty of his profession, and he would not allow the patient's eccentricities to get in the way of Yukitaka's seeing him to a full recovery. That was why he allowed him to stay here, despite the part of him that knew he should have handed his patient over to the police long ago.

Besides, the young man had dragged himself here, rather than thrown himself in the river or in front of an automobile. Did that not indicate a will to live, at very least on some unconscious level?

Perhaps that was why he said a little more coldly than he intended to the nurse: "Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the patient is unable to feed himself?"

"Yes, Doctor. I'll try that immediately."

He could not but notice the edge in Mrs Tsuchiya's voice, however. Of course the same thought had occurred to her; she was not incompetent.

But it did not make Yukitaka feel any better when, over the next few days, he was able to witness first-hand her and the other nurses' unsuccessful attempts at getting the patient to eat. They might as well have been feeding a stone statue for all their efforts bore fruit. They had ways of making him open his mouth and could put a glass of water to his lips, but they could do nothing to make him swallow any of it.

The younger nurses whispered when they didn't think Yukitaka could hear that the patient was worse than a baby, or the doddering old men who came here to die. It was a shame, really, to see someone so young and handsome acting so disgusting. If he didn't want to eat, they said, why didn't he just say so so they could leave him alone? "Maybe he's going into hibernation—you know, like a squirrel or a bulb tuber waiting out the winter," one of them whispered in jest to another, prompting a fit of laughter from her colleague. "Really, have you ever heard of a human being hibernating? Ridiculous. . . ."

Yukitaka could not explain why overhearing that chatter angered him like it did, but he did not chastise them, only redoubled his efforts—even as it became apparent even Mrs Tsuchiya was quickly losing her seemingly infinite patience, as she had to wipe spilled rice porridge from the young man's throat and yukata again and again. It was embarrassing to watch.

At the same time, however, Yukitaka could clearly see that the problem was not that the young man could not eat, but that he would not. Mrs Tsuchiya's eyes when she looked up at the doctor standing in the doorway told him enough: maybe he just wants to die.

Maybe he did, Yukitaka conceded. But that did not mean they should give up.

—

_The patient has not eaten nor drunk anything since he was first admitted to my clinic three weeks ago. Despite our repeated efforts, he continues to refuse any kind of nourishment, including intravenous saline drips, which he simply rips out when no one is watching._

__

Somehow despite the lack of nourishment, his condition has hardly worsened in all that time.

I have noted a slight drop in the patient's weight. However, where any normal human being would have already suffered the effects of dehydration, none are present. Nor does his body seem to be reallocating nutrients to its more vital functions, as one would expect to see in a patient who has been steadily starving himself. I do not know how it is possible, but our mystery patient thus far seems to be perfectly capable of living without food or water.

I have devised several tests in the hopes of finding the root cause of his miraculous self-sustainment, but so far none has been successful. Nor has the patient himself been of any help in this matter, as he continues to refuse to say anything. We do not even know his name. In fact, he has not uttered a word since the first day he was in our care. Either he possesses extraordinary willpower, or he is suffering some sort of severe on-going mental trauma, either resulting from external stress or psychological disease. It is quite a stalemate we are caught in, as I cannot properly diagnose him without knowing what induced him to this stubborn silence in the first place.

_He has not slept since that first day, either, except when administered tranquilizers. The rest of his time is spent in a state of absent-minded wakefulness in which lucidity can come and go seemingly at random. Not eating is one thing, a merely physical matter, but I cannot grasp how one can continue with this sleeplessness and not go completely out of his mind. Again, it leads me to wonder what happened to this young man before he stumbled upon our clinic, but I fear unless he suddenly starts speaking again, even science may be hopelessly inadequate to answer that question. . . ._

-

Yukitaka removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath. The patient's illness was an enigma to the doctor that wore on him to the point of physical exhaustion when he expended too much energy in the increasingly futile struggle to solve it. Even the phonograph playing a soothing waltz nearby failed to calm his restless mind. The music was not intended for his benefit anyway. It was to calm his patients, and distract their thoughts if only temporarily from their own maladies.

There was one on whom it had no effect, however, and Yukitaka no longer knew why that should still surprise him.

It had been three months since that journal entry—almost four since the patient landed, after a sort, on his doorstep—and in that time there had been no change in his condition but a slight decline. Not even the decline the doctor would have expected. He was well enough to hold up his own head and sit in the wheelchair Yukitaka had provided for him; but he was too weak to right himself, let alone stand. No, the truth of the matter was, he was unwilling to expend the effort to do these things. Yukitaka had little doubt the young man could stand on his head with little trouble . . . _if he only wanted to_. Obviously he still possessed enough control of his faculties to prevent Yukitaka and the nurses from taking the proper measures to keep his body alive.

A nurse opened the door to the veranda to come back inside from the garden; and for a moment, though it was a fine day, the chilly November air caused the doctor to shiver involuntarily.

Sitting across from him, in his hospital robes and with only a quilt over his lap to warm him, the patient did not move. Nor did he show any sign that he had even acknowledged the opening of the door or the cold that came with it. Yukitaka raised his eyes to meet the young man's. The width of his pupils in their crimson irises did change with the light, and the chill brought the same goosepimples to his arms that it did the doctor's. So then, there was someone home; he just wasn't showing himself.

Needing a change of scenery, Yukitaka stood and made his way over to the window. Outside in the small garden, the rose bushes someone had planted all around the clinic years ago were emaciated by the cold, but the asters that had seemingly spontaneously grown up around their roots without any human intervention were blooming brilliantly: hundreds of thumbnail-sized blue and violet eyes staring back at him. He turned away and cleared his throat.

"'Why do I overlive,'" the words rose from memory to his lips, "'why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out to deathless pain? How gladly would I meet mortality my sentence, and be earth insensible. . . .'"

For a moment he savored the archaic feel of the words in his mouth, like the flavors of a cigar rolled around on the tongue before the smoke must be exhaled. Something in the journal entry had made him think of that line. The anguish of that first man who spoke for all of men was something he could not feel himself—his role in this world was to stave off death, not hasten it—but something in it struck a chord, perhaps the elusive answer to the mystery of his patient. "Is that what keeps you like this?" he asked the young man, facing the window. "Is it death you've come to me to wait for?"

Yukitaka knew better by now than to expect a reply, but he turned to look at his patient nonetheless, hoping against hope that young man might at last show some sign that he had heard the doctor's words—that they had had any effect on him. Anything at all.

But once again his patient was silent and unresponsive.

Yukitaka lowered his voice.

"Tell me what I must do if I'm to understand who you are, where you came from," he said to the young man. "Give me some sign if you won't speak." It felt somewhat like he imagined it would speaking to an individual in a coma, or to a late family member's ashes at their gravestone. As it was, Yukitaka had never had cause to do such a thing, though he had often witnessed others doing the same, and wondered if they were really so naive as to think their words were heard; or were they just doing it for their own benefit, to lessen the weight of guilt on their souls?

He could not be sure which, because he felt neither heard nor comfortable as he confided in the young man: "Your life is a mystery to me. Surely you must understand that as a man of science, that unsettles me more than anything else. I must understand you, and yet the more I try to do so, the more I am confused by what I discover and the more I feel shut out by your continued silence. What happened to—"

A noise from the other room startled him to sudden silence, though when he looked he saw it was only one of the nurses helping an elderly patient back to his room.

Finding himself disquietingly self-conscious, Yukitaka went back to the side of the young man's chair before he asked again, in a voice barely above a whisper: "What happened to make you this way? What was so terrible that you shut yourself in your own world like this? You know, some of my staff are saying that the reason you refuse treatment is that you are trying to end your life, but I have my doubts. It is not that I presume to judge whether a life is worthy of throwing away or not, only . . . that I wish I could see what you see, just once, just so I knew how to help you. Just so I _understood_."

The purple eyes rose up to meet his, as though to take him up on the challenge—but only for the briefest of moments, before they were once again looking through Yukitaka into whatever emptiness occupied the patient's thoughts.

Once again Yukitaka sighed, and took his seat on the other side of the table, closing the journal.

Frustration.

For one second he had felt himself on the brink of a breakthrough under his patient's gaze, but all it turned out to be was added frustration. It seemed most of the time now that that was _all_ he understood, and with each day it only grew more layered and nuanced, like a tangle of briars whose buried roots he could never find.

—

_Their forms flashed before his eyes, their outlines hazy but the guilt they dredged up sharp as a cutting dagger. That boy from his village school bleeding on the side of the road, the back of his skull split open. Doctor H in his rose garden, backlit by the summer sun, and his hedge trimmers dripping black ichor. A whole town's worth of blood, drenching the roses like rain. And it was K's, pouring over his fingers like a flooding of the river, dark with mud, as he tried to staunch the flow. Or was he trying to hasten it? He couldn't tell anymore, he just couldn't. Were they really all dead? Did he really do this? Maybe he was imagining every last one of them. Maybe they never existed at all. Maybe it was all just an hallucination, a nightmare. He couldn't tell anymore._

__

The body under him shuddered and spasmed, dark eyes staring at him like the eyes of a dying rabbit or deer. It was K—no, his sister, fighting for every breath, and he couldn't do anything to help her. Everything he tried just made it worse—he held her tighter, trying to keep her from slipping away, and he just lost her that much faster. . . .

_"Demon-child. . . ." It was her lips that formed the words, but they came out in a hundred different voices. His mother's. His uncle's wife's as he tore into her barren womb. It was boys with sticks and stones and fists and villagers in a small country town with scythes and swords hidden away since the war—they cut into him, he felt the sting, the tearing of his own flesh, but he didn't die, he couldn't, and blood spilled down their faces, their shoulders, their chests torn and ragged like strips of cloth, like flags in the wind, wavering in the heat of the flames that danced around them. "How could you do this to us?" Everything was flames, flames consumed everything, boiling blood, charring flesh, and still they reached for him, grabbing at him. "We trusted you—you monster! How could you betray us, how could you kill us like this? You should never have been born. You should die! Demon spawn, die for what you've done. . . . You deserve to die!"_

And it's real. He tries to will it away, tells himself he's just imagining things, he's dreaming, but it doesn't work. The vision worms its way into his mind, and it won't go away. It's happening now. He can smell the burning homes and the burning flesh, and this isn't just his imagination, he couldn't make this up. He can't get it out of his nostrils, out of his mouth. The copper tang of blood on his fingers, running down his arms, running down the back of his throat. It's in his eyes and all he can see is red, swelling up over the rooftops in the smoke, licking at his body, begging him for another sacrifice, for _more_. . . .

No more! He can't watch any more! This isn't him, it's some monster that's done all this. Some monster that maybe's inside him, maybe it is him, making him watch its play of destruction. . . . But no. No, they have the wrong person. It's not his fault. He's not a demon. Ruka assured him of that—

"She wanted nothing more to do with you! You're an abomination! She couldn't stand the sight of you!"

No! That's a lie! She loved him! She's here with him now. He can feel her familiar hand on his shoulder as she leans down—and he sees her dead for three years, for five, for ten years now, and the worms in her lungs have eaten away at her arms and through her breast, and her beautiful eyes—

Make it go away.

That's the only thing he can do now. He has to make it go away. His own eyes stare back at him from the opaque brown glass of a jar, warped and hounded and ugly, and it seems to beckon him, to speak to him: yes, he can put an end to this if he wants to. The pain will only last a moment. He can cut this vision out, let it all bleed out. If he no longer exists, he can't see it anymore, right? Maybe then he can finally rest in peace. . . .

—

"Doctor, hurry! Come quick!"

Yukitaka hardly had a moment to ask his current patient's forgiveness before he dashed off in the direction of the nurse's scream. The man he was attending would survive his momentary absence, but he could not say the same for whoever had necessitated that call.

"It's that young man with the strange eyes," the nurse said when she caught up with him in the hallway, breathless and holding her chest as though to manually still her racing heart. "Young Sachie was with him when it happened. She said he lashed out at her and shattered the jar, and . . . and then . . ."

She was unable to continue, but what she had already said made Yukitaka increase his pace.

He found the young nurse in question sitting against the door frame, where she had stumbled in her shock. She was biting her knuckle as she stared in the direction of the patient's bed, trying not to cry out.

And what unspeakable horror had garnered such a reaction? The patient was sitting up in bed facing them, but he seemed to be preoccupied with something in his hands. The sunlight coming through his window backlit his figure so that the doctor's eyes first had to adjust in order to see the steady dark stream of blood that fell over his wrist and dripped from between his fingers onto his lap, the bedsheets, and the floor.

Yukitaka hurried to his side, paying little heed to the brown glass of a broken jar for cotton swabs that crunched beneath his shoes. The patient trembled when the doctor grabbed him by the shoulders, but he did not release the white-knuckled grip he had on the piece of glass in his left hand, and otherwise showed no sign whatsoever of recognizing Yukitaka's presence.

The doctor pried his hands apart; and though he had seen his share of factory accidents and knife fights, he was startled by the sheer persistence and violence with which the patient had cut his own wrist. The wound was deep, very deep, and continued to bleed steadily even as Yukitaka applied pressure to the veins feeding it. There could be no doubt about the intention behind such an act, and Yukitaka was relieved that the call had come when it did. If the young man had done the same to his other wrist, or if there had not been someone in the room already to witness it, his actions would almost certainly have proved fatal.

Once he had recovered from the initial shock, taking the necessary measures to save the young man's life came instinctively to Yukitaka, and he worked quickly to staunch the flow of blood, calling for alcohol and gauze and sutures from his stunned staff.

He had the patient chloroformed as well, though aside from the body's automatic tremble of shock, the young man did not even seem to register the pain he surely must have been in. He had seemed reluctant to loosen his grip on the shard of glass—on the very weapon he had used against his own person—which was not inconsistent with the patient's strange, on-again-off-again catatonia. The young nurse who had been with him when it happened had been shocked by his sudden fit of violence, which seemed to have literally sprung out of nowhere, confessing to him later that she had been terrified when he had picked up the piece of broken glass that he would try to hurt her.

Yukitaka was convinced now, however, that the young man's motives had been entirely self-destructive, even more so than his previous refusal to eat; and he wondered, should he expect more attempts like it in the future?

Still, it went against everything he believed in to simply let the patient die.

"'If your right hand offends you, cut it off,'" the doctor thought aloud as he sat with the patient alone later that evening. "Is that what you were thinking? Or were you really trying to end your life?"

The wound had been stitched up and tightly bandaged, and his right hand lay limp at his side. His gown and the bedlinens on which he lay were fresh, the bloodstained ones taken out to be burned. Glass jars and vases of flowers, rubber tubes and medical instruments—anything that might remotely be used as a weapon against oneself was moved out of reach, and Yukitaka was tempted to clear the whole room of them. Even then, though, he knew, the patient could still strangle himself with the bedsheets or bite his own tongue, if he were determined enough.

Of course, the young man did not answer him no matter how long the doctor spoke to him. The sedative had worn off, and his eyes had fallen open to stare at the ceiling, but Yukitaka knew better by now than to think he was awake. Or even asleep, for that matter.

"I wish I had the slightest clue as to what dreams you think are so terrible you'd rather punish yourself with this sort of waking hell," Yukitaka whispered. "As it is, I cannot fathom it. If only you would have confided in me before taking the extreme measures you did. I imagine you must feel trapped in your own mind, but can't you see that that is all the more reason to talk to me? Whatever hell this is, it is a hell of your own choosing. You don't have to be its prisoner. Speak to me, share your troubles with another living soul, and we might banish whatever demons keep you awake all day, together. If you would only trust me."

There was not even a twitch from the young man to indicate he might be on the right path, let alone that he had been heard.

Strangely, though, the longer Yukitaka talked to him, the more it felt like he and the patient had been engaged in active conversation, even though the other remained as unresponsive as a porcelain doll throughout.

He returned the next morning to change the dressings himself, satisfied to see the wound swollen and hot to the touch, but free from infection. Not for the first time he wondered if he should have given the patient morphine for the pain he must certainly have been in, but a niggling sense of curiosity told him to wait until the patient asked for it himself. Yukitaka did not consider himself a sadist—that is, as much as maladies like this young man's titillated him intellectually, he could not say he actually wished him pain—but nor could he say that he did not have an ulterior motive in withholding medication from his strange patient. It was true that he wanted to see how well the patient's body could heal without external help, just as it continued to thrive without sustenance. But was that not just a convenient excuse?

An excuse to see how much pain the young man could bear before he actually cried out for help?

Yukitaka shook his head, and pushed that dark thought back down, deep down inside himself where it belonged. Whatever his personal motives may have been, the simple fact remained that he wanted to help this young man. He certainly did not want to lose him.

"It's been almost four years since you've been here," he told him. "Three years, ten months, and twenty-six days to be precise." His voice filled the space between them in the enclosed room like the voice of a lover, but shamed by that fact though Yukitaka was, there was nothing he was able to do about it. "I don't mind telling you that when you first came to me, I never imagined our relationship would last this long. I imagined you would recover and leave us, or—once you began refusing to eat—that you would waste away and we would eventually lose you. But now. . . ."

Now he wondered how much longer he could keep this going, or if his patient would once again attempt to foil his efforts when he turned his back.

That he had already tried again was Yukitaka's first thought when the nurse in charge of changing the dressings that evening came to find him, breathless. "It's his cut. . . ."

"What? Has he done it again? Has it become infected?"

"No." She laughed then, a shaky laugh that sounded a hair's-breadth from a sob. "It's . . . It's _not there_. I don't know how else to describe it. Doctor, you just have to see it."

He found the patient lying in his bed as always with eyes open to the ceiling. His supine right hand and arm lay naked beside him, and for a moment Yukitaka was sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. Did he have the correct arm? There was nothing on that wrist but a thin red line, as though it had been drawn on with ink.

"Did you remove the sutures?" he asked the nurse.

Who shook her head adamantly. "No. It was like that when I took the bandage off—like they had just fallen out all by themselves. I swear to God."

Yukitaka scrutinized the wound, prodding and pulling at the soft skin, but it was not just a trick of the light. Somehow his flesh seemed to have pulled itself back together; new cells were already forming, glistening raw and pink between the lips of the cut. Yukitaka had expected to see some initial signs of healing, but there was no way a human being could recover from what this young man had done to himself so quickly, and with such a lack of nutrients. One of his colleagues had to have been pulling a stunt. Yukitaka was not sure how it was done or who would have possessed the ingenuity with which to pull it off, but that was the only _logical_ explanation for it he could see.

"It's a miracle," the same nurse told him later in an awe-filled whisper. "A miracle, pure and simple." Not even a day had passed before the patient's wrist had healed to the point of being indistinguishable from its mate—no trace at all of the savage injury done to it. There was no medical explanation for such a rapid recovery, and in fact no better word than the one she had used to describe it: a miracle. All Yukitaka's schooling kept him from accepting that word, but what other way did he have to explain it?

At first the thought made him uneasy. It was an aberration of nature that any human should be able to heal from an injury of that sort in so short a time. But was it really a miracle, or was it an innate blessing?

To the young nurse who had witnessed him cutting himself with the glass shard it must have seemed like a curse, for she left the clinic with little more than a word's notice. Perhaps it was because she had feared for her own safety like she said, but Yukitaka wondered if she hadn't also caught a glimpse of the patient's inner darkness herself just before he tried to end his life. And to the patient himself, his continued existence seemed like anything but a blessing.

But to Yukitaka, he was—if the doctor would pardon the superstitious nature of the phrase—a godsend. No, Yukitaka believed in gods and demons no more than he believed the world was flat. But if, in fact, his mysterious patient were possessing of some heretofore unknown, extraordinary regenerative power, then undoubtedly the key to explaining it was inside. That was, it was in the young man's genes. And if that were the case, then that meant these remarkable abilities of his could be quantified and tested, and maybe even reproduced. The applications, once Yukitaka allowed himself to ponder them, were possibly endless.

And it was for that reason that Yukitaka swore he would do whatever was necessary to figure out once and for all where his patient came from, and what, precisely, he was.

—

A year passed by, and then another. June came again, and with it the first roses in the clinic garden, whose stalks grew more wild and tangled each year.

Yukitaka felt much the same way. Only a few years had passed since he undertook what seemed to him, as he sat at his mysterious patient's bedside that fateful evening, to be his life's work; yet when he looked in the mirror, the eyes that peered back seemed too exhausted and haggard to belong to the relatively young man that they did, and dark circles and crow's feet had begun to creep in around them. Ironically, it seemed, given the nature of his studies these days, the long, sleepless nights spent staring at samples under the microscope and religiously compiling his research had already done more to age him than his entire tenure with his old university.

He could not escape these changes being noticed by the clinic's staff as well. It seemed that every three or four months he was going through almost an entirely new batch of nurses; only those who were more mature and settled stayed longer than six. He faulted them for it, told himself they lacked the proper constitution needed in this profession, yet at the same time Yukitaka knew that he was entirely to blame in one fashion or another. The hours he worked and the frustration he encountered more often than not made him short-tempered, especially with the younger, less experienced girls, and the other doctors who worked his clinic were quick to point it out to him.

Not that Yukitaka minded the distance he had created like a moat around himself. He had his own reasons for remaining aloof.

The nature of his research was delicate to say the least, and not only because he knew the medical community would see it as eccentric and a waste of their money. Even members of his staff would have deemed him a lunatic if they knew what he was really working on; and if in fact his efforts ever bore fruit, anyone who had ever assisted him on it in any way would clamor for a piece of the profits and the glory, whether they deserved it or not. For that reason, he was loathe to even let his colleagues near his mysterious patient, lest they start asking questions of their own, or even—God forbid—tamper with his specimen.

A _specimen_. . . . Was that all the young man with the strange eyes had become to him?

Yukitaka would have liked to think they had grown close, through all their "conversations" over the years, but he knew that to think as much was a fallacy. Whether the young man heard anything the doctor said to him or not, he never responded, and he continued to periodically attempt suicide by slashing his wrists.

Ironically, however, the more he did this, the less Yukitaka was able to treat him as he would any normal human being. The patient always recovered from his suicide attempts with remarkable speed—sometimes whether the doctor was there to catch it immediately or not. Naturally, at first Yukitaka was afraid of losing the patient each time this happened; but eventually a sort of complacency settled in, in which he began to expect these occurrences every few months as temporary bumps in the road to work patiently through.

And as the years wore on, he found himself gradually hardening to whatever inner torment made the patient cut himself over and over again, his sympathies giving way to a sort of admiration for his pathos and for the machinations of his superhuman body that was more akin to worship. He would painstakingly sketch the young man's eyes, or his half-healed incisions, or the knitting of his tissues under the microscope like some Renaissance painter meditating on the excruciating detail of Christ's wounds. Like Parsifal and his Holy Grail, he was obsessed with finding the secret he knew to be buried somewhere inside his mysterious patient. As he wrote in his private journal, _could it be this person holds the key to—_

But no. That was a fantasy, which Muraki Yukitaka, being a man of science, should have known better than to espouse, even if he, being a man of science, could dream of no greater find than that, impossible as it may seem. No, the words may have felt too much like a rash flight of fancy—that was why he crossed them out as soon as he wrote them—yet he continued to stare at them as though transfixed, unable to help himself, unable to will himself to believe there wasn't somehow some truth to them:

_Eternal life._

He tore himself away. He sat back and let out his breath, forced himself to look anywhere but back at the page. He closed the journal and removed his glasses, and polished them with his handkerchief just to give himself time to think, to be rational.

But was he not already being perfectly rational?

The fact of the matter was, the idea of finding a key to eternal life was only considered a myth because no one had yet done it. The scientific proof did not yet exist. If he could get proof, Yukitaka could change all that. He could stop mankind from aging, from contracting disease and suffering. From dying. . . . Yes, if such a thing were possible at all, the young man who had been living in his clinic for five years without food or water was living proof.

It may have been in his blood, in his tissues—locked up in the genetic code inside his every cell itself. Yukitaka did not yet know. But it amazed him that that young man did not even seem to care that he enjoyed such a unique, indeed privileged, place among creation.

At least he did not seem to mind, either, that the doctor was drawing his blood in order to understand that unique place. To Yukitaka, the greater crime was letting what knowledge he could bring the field of medicine go to waste, and thus he was determined not to let his patient's existence be in vain. He was not a superstitious man, but he would not have become a doctor if he did not believe in the notion that a person could be born to answer a higher calling. For all he knew, he had been meant to find this young man—that his struggle to define himself as a doctor had been merely a preamble to the discovery of that patient on his doorstep. If it meant the answer to his quest would not reveal itself for five years or for fifty, what right did he have to complain when his destiny had already been so clearly decided? Not many individuals ever even knew what they were meant to do, and even fewer ever came into possession of a secret that had the potential to heal all of mankind of its one inevitable condition: death.

Perhaps, too, the likes of that young man were not meant to exist in this world. That thought did occur to Yukitaka on more than one occasion. But if anything it only made him more determined. If in fact there were a Creator, he reasoned, who had made living things mortal, then this act of science's rebellion was no less than what He deserved for such a flawed creation. Despite his profession, Yukitaka would hardly call himself a humanist. No, if he were perfectly honest, had his research only one goal, it was not to better mankind so much as to beat Death at its own game.

—

"What were you thinking? How could you be so careless, you idiot? The doctor's told you time and time again not to let the patient have access to anything that could be used as a weapon!"

And the young nurse who had forgotten her pair of small sewing scissors sobbed a half-intelligible apology behind their backs as Yukitaka and his nurses hurried to stop the bleeding from the patient's wrists.

The wounds were self-inflicted, as usual. And as usual, the young nurse who had been sitting with him brought her needlework to keep herself from falling asleep. As soon as she left the room—she claimed she was only out for one minute—he had seized the opportunity, and her scissors. Yukitaka knew it was futile to blame her, even though it had been her fault. No matter how careful they were, it seemed the patient always found _some_ way of slashing his wrists.

"If you're not going to help, then get out! Don't you think you've done enough damage already?" Ms Nakagami shouted at the young nurse—who fled in tears.

She was not so old herself—just eighteen—and had begun her employment in the clinic after the earthquake last September; but this Nakagami Tomoko was not shy about bossing even her seniors around. Not that her reasons for doing so were ever wrong or misguided. Nor were they even hypocritical: she had little in the way of official medical training to speak of, but was a quick study and a perfectionist in everything she set herself to. Yukitaka admired her that; he felt he could trust her to be thorough and discrete; and for that reason, he was strongly considering putting her in charge of the care for this young man.

It was the height of summer, 1924. Already six years had passed since Yukitaka had taken the young man in, and it felt as though this kind of game had been going on from the beginning.

"How long has that man been here, Doctor?" Ms Nakagami asked him after they had patched up the patient.

Yukitaka sighed. "You've been working here almost a year, correct?"

By the way her eyes narrowed, she appeared to know when he was trying to avoid answering her questions.

"I noticed there were older scars on his wrists. They were faint, but there were a lot of them. Has he done this before?"

"You have good eyes, Ms Nakagami. You know that? I rarely have occasion to say that to someone."

"Dr Muraki, if that man has been trying to kill himself all this time, then why do you continue to waste this clinic's resources on keeping him alive?"

Yukitaka knew he would not be able to avoid her questions forever. Like he said, she had good eyes, and he was not referring to her vision. He was well aware his cagey answers would do nothing to satisfy her curiosity, and in fact only make her distrust him more. And while he could not risk losing a nurse with her wit and dedication—especially now that she had her own suspicions about the mysterious patient—could he risk telling her what he knew, and bringing her into the project he had undertaken? He did not doubt she would be strong enough to handle the science or dubious ethics involved—in many ways, she was as cold as he—but she was slightly more ambitious than Yukitaka would have liked. Then again, she had often told him in no unclear terms that she had not gone into nursing for the money or glory.

That afternoon, having made his decision, he took Ms Nakagami aside and begged her discretion. The reason he had provided a room for the young man and kept him in the clinic for six years, Yukitaka told her, despite his seeming eagerness to die, was simply because he wasted none of the clinics resources. He had taken no food or drink and hardly any medication in all the time he had been there, and yet still somehow remained as healthy as he had been when he first arrived.

He disclosed the unusual details of the patient's previous suicide attempts to Ms Nakagami as well. No one else on his staff knew the full extent of what he told her; Yukitaka had been very careful about keeping the patient's miraculous healing abilities under lock and key, and furthermore there were few on staff who had been working for him during the young man's other attempts on his life and were still in his employ.

Eventually, however, he understood that he would have to trust what data he had compiled on the patient so far to another soul for safekeeping, and he wondered if he had found a soul worthy of carrying that heavy burden of trust in Ms Nakagami. At very least she would be an effective go-between on the patient's behalf, a sort of scarecrow with which Yukitaka might stave off unwanted questions from the rest of the staff.

But this severe young woman, who was not prone to be taken in by jokes or superstition, was slow to believe him at first, convinced as she was that the doctor's claims were physically impossible. Laughing, he told her she could forget he ever mentioned it if the cuts on the patient's wrists had not healed over by the next morning.

Needless to say, she was clearly unused to the practice of apologizing.

—

And still it continued.

On and on and on, and every time he thought the end was in sight. . . .

Tsuzuki didn't understand why he was allowed to continue to exist, unless it was to be tortured like this for eternity. Was this his punishment for what he did? Or for what he was?

_Demon. Monster. Murderer._ Their words followed him in an incessant flow, like waves crashing in to shore, chasing after him, lapping at him. Like grasping hands, or flames licking at him—always pulling, tearing, and yet no matter how hard they tried to bring him down, no matter now hard he tried to destroy himself like they wanted and put an end to this hellish cycle, somehow he always managed to slip away.

Well, he'd done it this time. If they wanted his blood, they could have it. His veins were wide open. And the eyes they reviled him for, those unnatural eyes that only proved to everyone who saw him that he should not exist, that he should never have been born let alone been allowed to live—he'd taken care of that, too.

So why wouldn't they just leave him alone and let him go?

"He's lost too much blood. . . . How long has he been like this?"

_Answer the question! What did you do?_

. . . And he's back in that village, standing over the corpse of a boy he once knew, with a face he once trusted and loved, and flames are flickering over dead eyes, making them glow a familiar shade of crimson. The faceless forms standing around him are streaked with blood, the scent of decaying roses hanging heavy in an evening sky so red it sets the couple of moths that float by aflame, and they just keep beating their wings, oblivious to it even as they're being burnt up—

"Doctor!"

"Quiet. He always comes back. You know that."

—

Ms Nakagami glared at him from where she knelt at the patient's side. She waited until the nurse beside her had turned away to dispose of the basin of bloody water before she hissed back at him with all her frustration, "And what if this is the one time he doesn't?"

That was simply impossible. But what good would it do Yukitaka to try explaining that to her now, that this young man could not die? That was the beauty of the unique creature that he was. There was almost nothing he could do to himself that would cause him to die.

Yet even the doctor could not deny that the damage he had inflicted was notably more severe than any previous attempt. This time the patient had not only slit his wrists, he had also tried to gouge out his right eye. Fortunately, the wound had not been deep enough to penetrate his brain—which Yukitaka had little doubt would have been fatal despite all his powers of regeneration—though the mere fact that he had stabbed himself in the eye was a clear indication that something had changed from his patient's earlier, almost ritualistic suicide attempts. If he were not trying to kill himself with such an act of mutilation, however, then what was the reason? Had he done it thinking it would ensure he would no longer have to see whatever visions were responsible for keeping him awake day after day? But he had slashed his wrists as well, so he had been hoping to die anyway. Could it be that hatred was to blame for turning his hand against his own unusual eyes?

To the Muraki Yukitaka of five or six years ago, perhaps such a violent display of self-loathing would have garnered his admiration and pity. Now, however, it angered and frustrated him. Did the young man not understand what he could do for Yukitaka—what he could do for the world? It was selfish of him, to say the least, to show such utter disregard for a body that was, in all ways the doctor could think of, perfect. If Yukitaka did not know better—if he was not already convinced of the patient's one-track mind—he would say his patient was doing this to spite him.

"I'm hooking him up to an intravenous drip," Ms Nakagami told him with a sigh.

"That won't be necessary. He'll heal on his own just like all the other times. You'll see."

"Then just to be safe. That was a lot more blood than usual, Doctor."

But even as he argued with her, Yukitaka sounded to his own ears like a madman, his fervor and blind certainty just a bit too religious for a man who claimed allegiance to no faith but science. Consciously, he knew just as well as she did that he was letting pride get the better of his logic and judgment, but that same pride would not allow him to admit it.

That was 5 January 1926, the patient's first suicide attempt of the year.

A week later he was in a coma.

Yukitaka was at a loss as to how to explain it. The young man had recovered from so many attempts over the years almost without outside help, his wounds healing over before they had even had a proper chance to bleed; but now it was days before the sinews of his wrists could be seen to be knitting back together, and the damage to his eye remained almost as fresh as when he had stabbed it. Yukitaka worried it might be gone for good.

Ordinarily he would have seen this slow, steady improvement as a sign the patient was healing well and avoiding infection. But that young man was in no ways ordinary, and the fact that it took him longer than a few days to recover completely was plenty cause for worry. He would have said the violence of this particular attempt meant the young man was growing desperate, if it had not been for the desperation that had infused the entirety of his silent, eight-year-long residence in the clinic.

There was nothing tangible to indicate it, but something told Yukitaka he might actually lose his patient.

Strange how five, six years ago he would have been prepared for it, even seen it as inevitable the way the patient was going. Now it frightened him like nothing else.

It was not even the thought of losing an invaluable specimen or what advancements might be made while the young man still lived that troubled him so. It was as though, seeing the patient in such a sorry, fragile condition, Yukitaka were staring his own mortality in the face. If such a person as this could be allowed to die, then what hope was there for any of the human race, let alone a scientist such as himself?

He could not be sure if it were the need to immortalize that fact or the sudden realization that the young man might not be around much longer that compelled Yukitaka to take his picture. Then again, it might have been for reasons as simple as the grace and beauty of his anguish, or the seductive, almost worshipful way in which the clear light of that winter afternoon illuminated his features.

His Eastman sat on the bedside table, the photograph secure within it, waiting for development. The young man had seemed so otherworldly in that golden light, and unusually fragile with the rubber tubes that kept him alive snaking out from under his robe, the fresh bandages over his eye barely whiter than his pale skin, his dark hair in a fine disarray from when Yukitaka laid him back down against the pillow after changing the dressing. The black and white film would not pick up the queer purple of his good eye, shining like a dark red wine in the angle of the light; but it would hold for all posterity the agony in its depth, the quiet melancholy in his slightly parted lips, the relief of sinew and clavicle through the delicate skin of his throat, as though he were only breaths away from death.

Of course, Yukitaka knew his patient was much more resilient than he looked, but at the same time there was no way he could guarantee the young man would remain with him forever. He would continue to do everything in his power to keep the young man alive, for as long as possible; but should anything happen to him, then if nothing else, that photograph would prove that he existed.

It would prove that this impossible person had actually existed.

—

The throne room of the Great King Enma, lord and judge of the land of the dead, was a place the Count could never quite accustom himself to. Perhaps it was something to do with the bodiless heads that sat at the foot of his dais, whose eyes and nose respectively scrutinized every soul who bowed down before it; or something to do with the mirror behind the king himself, which reflected back all the sins of the one who peered into it.

Perhaps, too, it was the simple fact that it was a place for the souls of the dead, and the Count by nature was more concerned with the souls of the living. In fact, that was what called him here at Enma's behest: one particular soul the demon king should have claimed for his own long ago, but for reasons unknown to him, the man was still living.

"Count. . . ." For such a seemingly slight frame, his low voice rumbled throughout the chamber so that the Count felt more than heard each nuanced, achingly slow word: "It has come to my attention that some unknown force is artificially prolonging the life of one Tsuzuki Asato. For the past seven and a half years he has been living in a self-induced catatonia with neither food nor water, during which time he has made multiple attempts at suicide—each time in vain. I have ordered an investigation into the cause of his continued life, in order to root out any tampering with the souls of the living that might be taking place on our end, but we could save our shinigami valuable time and effort if anyone in our employ had information that might make better sense of this matter."

In other words, the Count thought, he stood as good as accused. Better to come clean now than wait for the facts to be revealed in all their unpleasantness. "I take full responsibility, my lord."

"You take responsibility?"

"Yes. It was I keeping his flame going in the Castle of Candles. No need to waste valuable resources on an investigation when I freely admit my guilt. And I expect to be punished for my actions. But let the record show I do not regret taking them."

"Is that so? And what reason could you possibly give me for justifying this behavior?"

What reason, indeed. But that he would take with him to the grave, if the likes of him were even allowed an end to their services. "I don't expect my reasoning to make logical sense to this court, my lord," the Count said. "But suffice it to say he is . . ." _Precious to me? All I have left?_ No, he could not say that. . . . "A source of some fascination for me."

Enma leaned forward in his seat—just a slight movement for the king, but possessing in it all the skepticism the Count feared. That was why he hated this place: here he was transparent.

"If he were so fascinating," said the demon king, "then is that why you allow him to suffer?"

"I do not know, my lord."

"The court demands the reason you have taken such unusual interest in this individual. Do you have information about this Tsuzuki Asato that would complicate his trial?"

"Whatever information I have is privileged by my position, my lord."

"Not when he dies, it is not. Then he becomes _my_ business."

He was backed into a corner now, the Count knew. As did the demon lord's attendants. They stood still and silent in their king's presence, but he could sense their eyes on him, judging him as if he were a mortal soul, hungry for the sins he kept hidden deep within himself. No doubt that was why he was here, rather than discussing these matters in a private conference with Enma as should have been his right. This was a public humiliation. They all knew what their king thought of the Count. They were already convinced of his guilt and were hoping he would slip up. But it was a matter of life and death that he did not—his life, or what semblance of it he enjoyed, and Tsuzuki's.

Already on his knees, the Count prostrated himself before the throne.

"With your permission, my lord," he said, making certain everyone would hear him clearly, "I would like to strike a bargain."

"A bargain? For this human's soul? You forget your place, Count. You know I could simply order you to cede control of his flame to me and my ministry."

Yet even as he said so, the Count could hear the smile in Enma's tone of voice. He showed great temerity trying to deal with the judge of the dead for a mere soul, but even gods must tire of their rule never being tested. And, though Enma may have only sensed it thus far, this was no mere human soul they discussed. He acquiesced: "But let us hear what this _bargain_ of yours would entail. Do you mean to suggest to me that you would let Tsuzuki's soul go if your conditions were met?"

"Only one condition, your honor. A simple request, really."

"And that is?"

"When Tsuzuki Asato dies, his soul will not continue on but will remain here in Enma-cho, to be instated in your lordship's service as a shinigami."

A murmur passed around the throne room, but from the the throne itself, silence. The Count looked up then, to see the slightest of scowls on the demon king's otherwise unmoved visage.

"You are aware I decide a soul's worthiness to become a shinigami."

"I am aware of what kind of characters, what kind of histories and crimes factor into your honor's decision. I do not pretend to know this Tsuzuki's sins, but I do know that he has potential. So much potential, my lord. It is that which caught my attention and drew me to him in the first place."

The last part was not a complete truth, but the Count was practiced enough in opacity it might as well have been. What did Enma need to know of the reason for Tsuzuki's potential, or his heritage? Why dredge those old crimes—his own crimes—up from out of the dark in which they deserved to remain buried? Those facts were not relevant to these proceedings.

Nor was it relevant why the Count wanted Tsuzuki to remain in Meifu. It would be dangerous for both of them if the demon king were ever to suspect the bond they shared, and the deep nature of it. It was the Count who violated Meifu's rules more than two and a half decades ago, so much more so than what he was admitting to now; but if the truth were ever revealed, it was Tsuzuki who would bear the brunt of the punishment, though he bore none of the blame for what he was. No, simply keeping him in Meifu was opening them both to great enough risk.

But it was a risk that the Count had to take. Though it might have been selfish of him, it was only natural for him to cling to that young man, if only Enma knew the reasons. It was within his rights to want Tsuzuki here.

"He possesses powers far superior to those of most human individuals, which would serve my lord and this administration well, if they were properly nurtured," he continued, as though it were the only motive he could possibly have. "It would truly be a shame to waste them."

A long moment went by in which Enma remained silent and impassive; until at last he sat back, and said, "Very well, Count. If you release your hold on Tsuzuki's soul, I give you my word I will have him tested upon arrival for the position of a shinigami. Whether he succeeds or fails from that point on shall be his own doing."

The Count pressed his forehead to the floor once again, more out of relief than out of the gratitude that he expressed. What he did not say was that whatever hold Enma thought he had as the Count of the candles over Tsuzuki's soul was almost nonexistent; he was responsible, but not in the ways his lord suspected. No, he did not think the young man would fail.

His only hope was that Tsuzuki might forgive him, for denying him the oblivion he appeared to crave so badly. God knew he wanted nothing more than to save Tsuzuki; although in doing so, the Count might have damned him forever.

—

Yukitaka tried everything.

He had closed the wound and exhausted every method he could think of to start the patient's heart again, he even had the tubes for a transfusion out and ready. With shirtsleeves rolled up, the veins bulging in his forearms, he was prepared to drain his own blood if he thought it would make an ounce of difference now. . . .

The tubes fell from his hand to roll on the floor like snakes as he finally gave up, sinking to the edge of the bed, a shaky hand running through his hair.

"Eight years," he heard himself say. The nurses stood around at a loss—they at least had had the sense to give up long ago—staring at him with worried expressions on their faces, but the words weren't for their benefit. "Eight years and what good does it do me now? Nothing. . . . Bloody _nothing!_"

The syllables shot through his teeth like a gritted curse. He was still unable to believe it. Every careful note he had made of the patient over the last eight years, every accommodation of his malady, every mad-dash effort made to save him from his spats of self-destruction would not allow Yukitaka to believe it, even if the lack of a pulse under his fingers as he checked for what must have been the hundredth time told it plain:

The patient was gone.

The trails of blood over his gown and the side of the bed, the slick pools of it the wooden floor, were the only sign of the life Yukitaka was certain even now he had just barely missed. The wounds that had barely healed from his last attempt were ripped open again—and again, the patient counting on multiple incisions to make sure he accomplished his goal this time. No one knew how long he had lain like that without help, the life slowly draining out of him. Once upon a time, it seemed, it wouldn't have mattered; but whatever magic his cells had worked to repair themselves in the past was over and done, as if they too had simply given up the fight.

A late-winter's snow was falling outside the window, the wan winter light casting away the shadows inside the room. It made the young man's skin look as cold and white as the ground outside, but not nearly as dead. Not nearly as dead as it should have. He kept expecting those purple eyes to reopen at any moment, to stare their blank stare at the ceiling as they had so many nights he came just to talk to the young man. Beneath the half-moon of his eyelashes, the faintest sheen of sweat still glistened on his cheek, even if his lips were fast losing their color. They never had much to begin with; and the breath that passed through them these past eight years should have been impossible without the food or drink he never took. If he had not died then, why should he die now? That was all Yukitaka wanted answered.

And now whatever answer may have been only a day away from discovery—the secret to eternal life itself—had died with him. To say it was a pity was a gross understatement. A travesty. . . . That was somewhat closer to the mark.

At least Yukitaka still had the blood and tissue samples that were safe back in his office, not to mention his copious, careful notes. Surely there was still some new knowledge to be gleaned from them.

But as he found himself unable to tear his gaze away from that pale face, perfect even in death, he understood what a truly minuscule measure of consolation that was.

—

White was falling.

That was the first hint of his surroundings that Tsuzuki could distinguish. Through a hazy field of vision, the world appeared soft and white, as though the heavens themselves were falling gently to earth, piece by piece. . . .

Snow. That must have been it. He remembered now, if only just vaguely: it had started snowing that morning, and it never stopped. It had been snowing as he lay in his bed in the clinic, and he'd watched each fat flake drift down as he felt himself growing colder and colder, like they were all sinking into him, and he had welcomed them with open arms—

Tears welled up in his eyes, drowning out that vision and the memory, and the sting of them was so sudden he couldn't help pressing the heels of his hands to his eyelids for some relief. He barely managed to bite back a cry before it even occurred to him why he was so upset.

He was back in that clinic in Tokyo. That was it. It hadn't worked. That time had been his final effort and it hadn't worked at all. They brought him back—somehow—they brought him back after everything he'd done to ensure they wouldn't, after everything he had done to make it clear he wanted to just _not be_, and he was going to have to go on living like that, with the hunger, with the memories, torturing him every second of every day, driving him mad, no, so far past all sense of madness he just couldn't stand it, didn't anyone _care_, couldn't they just let him die, couldn't they see that was the only thing he wanted, that he was _suffering_, but goddamn it, it should have worked, he didn't understand why it should still be this way, why he couldn't even manage to kill himself. . . .

Until he realized: the whiteness that was falling outside the window was not of snow, but the petals of cherry blossoms, caught on the breeze. But it was the wrong season for them. Not only that, but he was sure the window was on the wrong side of the bed. Had they moved him to a different room in the clinic, or a different location altogether? He was in a hospital bed and gown, but not those that he last remembered. And he would have known in an instant—with a touch or a single intake of breath. Their feel, the exact scent of them, of that clinic, were a part of him. After all, he had spent every minute of the last eight years in them.

A knock at the door would not allow him to dwell on that thought for long. He pulled the robe and bedsheets tighter around himself and himself into a sitting position so that he might be prepared for whoever it was on the other side.

Rather than the doctor or nurse he was expecting, a middle-aged gentleman entered, dressed in a suit and tie, with an expression on his face that was thrice as somber as either. Tsuzuki had never seen him before, nor could he guess what his purpose here was, but if he knew one thing it was that this was not the doctor from that Tokyo clinic.

"I'm glad to see you're awake," the man said gruffly, seemingly oblivious to Tsuzuki's confusion. "I hope you'll forgive me if I seem like I'm rushing things. Normally I would give those who are newly put in my charge a little more time to adapt to their surroundings, but my superiors seem to be of the opinion that you would be up for this even in your present condition. And these orders did come from remarkably high up. You—or so I have been told—are a special case. Unique. I don't presume to know anything about that, but I can say that the fact you appear to be conscious is a step in the right direction."

The strange man said all this while moving to the window, looking outside, and picking a stray thread off of the breast of his jacket, as though he weren't speaking to Tsuzuki at all but some other unseen occupant of the room.

That was, until he turned suddenly, and said, rather pointedly, "You are conscious, aren't you?"

It didn't seem to Tsuzuki that there was any denying that fact. His eyes were open, red-rimmed and blinking, and he was sitting up against the headboard of his bed. Still, he did not answer; and when the strange man smiled as though at a private joke, it seemed he had not needed to.

"Do you remember your name?" the man asked.

"Tsuzuki Asato."

Tsuzuki started. His own name had come out of him as though drawn out. After so many years without having said a word, speech should have felt awkward, his tongue and throat struggling to form the correct syllables from lack of use; but reality was quite the opposite.

Heart suddenly racing, he raised his hands and turned them over, palms upwards, to see the thick, jagged ridges of old scar tissue that crisscrossed each wrist.

It should not have been possible. He was sure he had done the job properly that last time. Had he really been unconscious so long his wounds had already healed? He could see out of his right eye again as well, his vision unaffected. . . . But no, this must have been a dream, merely a precursor to the oblivion that awaited him—anything but a sign that he was still alive. But he had not dreamed since . . . He couldn't even remember the last time he had dreamed. And somehow, the terror and confusion that suddenly seized him with a very visceral nausea felt a little too real for a body that had been so numb for the past eight long years.

He was suddenly and inexplicably afraid of the answer he would get—and who might overhear his question—but it was a natural imperative, he had to ask: "Where am I?"

The strange man stared at him a moment longer before moving away from the window. Perhaps Tsuzuki had only imagined it, but he thought he saw something different cross those otherwise indifferent eyes—pity maybe, or else some vague recollection of a similar time long past and barely remembered, long before that man ever worked his way up the bureaucratic ladder to become chief of the Summons Division, in this little section of the government of the land of the dead.

But Tsuzuki knew none of that, and his voice seemed just as cold as before as the man made his way around to the side of the bed.

"Let's start at the beginning, shall we?"


	7. Kurosaki File, Part A

4

_Learning to cope with feelings aroused in me_  
_My hands in the soil, buried inside of myself_  
_My love wears forbidden colours_  
_My life believes in you once again_

_—  
_

Dreams of him haunt me even now.

A grove of cherry trees in full bloom. The landscape bathed in the blood-red light of a lunar eclipse. Him, among everything else, shining pale and sharp like ice, like steel. The death of that woman. Myself, my violation. My agony. And at every scream, every twitch of muscle, his pleasure—and hatred—etched into me. . . .

Some might insist they are flashbacks, but they are never completely the same. Over the years they have . . . changed somehow. Been added to like mere memory cannot. A switch in point of view. Sometimes feelings and places appear to my senses more real than reality; sometimes much less so and I am well aware that I am dreaming. Sometimes events unfold in a way different from how I remember them, if memory of such a thing can even be accurate. A very different way. . . .

I see blood on my hands. Except, I'm not so sure anymore who it belongs to.

In my dreams, the images of medical procedures excite me. I know it was I who performed them, but I cannot remember physically doing them. Hearts beating without bodies. Unimaginable X-ray images burned into my retinas. The smell of burnt flesh and disinfectant that makes me want to vomit, and the putrid saffron smear of iodine over everything. Women violated in the name of science. Fetuses that have become tumors. Anxious children. People in pain. People having operations or drugs given them that they don't need, that are killing them. Being told they will die when they won't. Being lied to for the sake of the advancement of medical technology, or some richer individual. Or maybe just my own sick curiosity. . . .

Where does this all come from? Why does it excite me in sleep when my conscious mind finds it repulsive? It cannot all come from him. I do believe in monsters: They live in the human psyche, waiting to be born. But this . . .

When I dream these dreams, the one inside me kicks like a fetus in its womb. I don't know how long it's been growing there, or who implanted it or if it's been there as a part of me all along, but I know what it responds to. I know _whose_ influence it responds to.

Except lately, it's been _his_ blood on my hands. I can't see my own skin for it. My hands are slick and red, spotted with darker, congealed pieces that cling to my skin like leeches. It runs down my wrists. It stains the cuffs of my shirt. It won't come out.

His blood stains the front of my shirt, seeping through, seeping into me like the ink of a tattoo, or this curse he's saddled me with. He stands as if crucified before me, facing me, somehow on his feet. As an act of defiance, perhaps—of martyrdom, welcoming me into his embrace despite all the nasty things I intend to do to him, knowing full well how that self-righteousness disgusts me, fuels me. I know I am justified in what I'm about to do; he knows that as a murderer he deserves nothing less. I have my arms around him, and his weapon in my hand. I thrust it into his back, over and over. Just like he stabbed that woman's heart as I watched, all those years ago.

It feels so good. I cannot describe how good, and how wrong, it feels. It feels like sex. The only sex I have ever known, a violent, vile, and unnatural kind of penetration that, against my will, sends a thrill of satisfaction throughout my body. I feel it tugging behind my bellybutton, in my groin. It shoots up and down my limbs. In a strange way it feels like self-mutilation—like I'm committing seppuku through his body. And I can't help wondering if some of this blood on my hands is my own. Would it make me stop if it were? I don't think so. I want him to feel the violation he inflicted upon me all those years ago that much, even if a part of me is taken down with him. That's how desperately I want this.

His back must be a ragged mess, causing him excruciating pain with even the shallowest breath, but he hardly moves. He stares at me with eyes that are no longer able to hide behind glasses. And I revel in the reversal of our positions thinking, surely, I must be the stronger one now. Now that the knife is in my hand. His gaze is unwavering, penetrating, judging. He can't quite wipe the bitter smile off his lips even now. Yet somehow there is no more pretentiousness in it. He knows he's at my mercy as much as I'm at his.

I search and search, but I can't find the hate in that face that I thought would be so obvious. It is buried in a liar's smile. It is buried within myself, until it is all in myself. I look at my dripping hands and I see a killer mirrored in them, a monster. A demon child. Something that should never have been allowed to continue on.

I am hated.

Reviled.

I feel it in that moment, that single infinite second. I feel it in my heart, my solitude. My singularity. My sorry state. And it hurts so much I no longer care: I want to embrace that child, nurture him. I want to become the monster inside him because that is what everyone expects me to do, so why should I continue to fight it in vain? I want to have him the way he had me so long ago. It becomes a vicious wheel spinning round the two of us. It keeps us locked in this moment, in that grove of cherry trees, and—like something in a song, we can check out but never leave. He murmurs something to me. A name that's not really a name but still sounds familiar, and I know I will never remember it when I wake up, even though it is my own.

It belongs to both of us. Because we're not really so different. And even if I kill him, I can never kill him. Not without killing my self.

So I lean down and kiss his lips. In my dream, I'm simply compelled to do it. It is the sweetest kiss, because it is the purest symmetry in existence. It is a kiss I give my inferior, and take from the one who made me kneel inferior to him. Who destroyed my humanity, or bound me to it. It is a kiss of hate, but in my hate I am understood. I am justified. I am baptized and born anew from the pieces he broke me into, the murderer who cursed me and set me free, and my eyes are unclouded of delusion. I know who I am. I am a child of the darkness.

I wake up, heart pounding like it's about to burst, to feel nothing on my lips.

Somehow I feel bereft.

How can that be?

—

Tsuzuki put in his request again after our last case.

It had nothing to do with the case, which began and ended without incident. It was merely something he did every decade or so, like a convict who's served most of a hundred-year sentence wondering if he could finally get out on parole for good behavior. Tsuzuki was wondering if he had finally fulfilled whatever it was that was keeping him here in the purgatory that is a shinigami's existence. He wondered if he could die for good. It was a thing he did out of curiosity, at regular intervals like I said, but I didn't learn that until some time later.

He wouldn't tell me about it. He thought that if he did, I would be angry with him. Of course, he never said as much, but after all these years, I didn't need to read his mind to know which direction his reasoning would take. It had something to do with my convincing him to stay instead of burning himself into oblivion, back when I nearly lost him in Kyoto.

I think I said something about being lost without him. I said a lot of things at that time that I don't really remember all that well, but he does. Perfectly. Despite the state he was in, somehow he remembers. Often at the strangest times. Like my words were something precious to him to be protected. And who knows? Maybe they were.

Even now, I doubt he would leave even if by some freak chance his request was granted. All because of what I said to him that one night in Kyoto. Though he's been wanting it more than anything for the past eighty years, because he feels obligated to me, he would give up his chance at salvation.

But that didn't mean he wouldn't try and see if, first, that salvation was even possible.

It was also because of what I'd said that he felt a need to keep his request a secret from me. But he should have known me well enough by then to know it wouldn't work. I would notice that something was wrong, and I would find out what it was whether he came straight with me or not.

I could sense the gist of it from his behavior and the subtle reactions of our coworkers when he was around, like they were treading on thin ice whenever they had a reason to interact with him. The rest was filled in for me when I went over his head, and asked the person who knows Tsuzuki the best.

Even now I hate visiting the Castle of Candles. I dread the day the emotions that linger there like a thick layer of dust over everything finally overwhelm me, no matter how much I may have improved when it comes to defending myself from them.

But I was worried about Tsuzuki, so it never crossed my mind that I shouldn't go because of my own discomfort. Besides, no one in our department had been around as long as Tsuzuki, and I doubted any of them would give me a straight answer to my question even if they knew it. Tatsumi and the chief would stonewall me—granted, they would have every right to—and the rest would probably pretend not to have the first clue as to what I was talking about.

But I hardly had to explain myself to the Count for him to feel sorry enough for me and spill the beans.

I didn't mean to use his fondness for Tsuzuki to my own advantage, but I wanted an answer. And the Count gave it to me without making a bigger deal of it than, "Well, as his partner, you really should be hearing this from him, not me."

He told me about Tsuzuki's past requests to move on, and how it was something he had just decided to do for himself one year without discussing it with anyone—although somehow someone had figured out what he was up to, and now everyone knew when he was putting in one of these requests, even if no one ever talked about it. He also told me that each time Tsuzuki did this, Enma promptly rejected him. "You have to understand, Kurosaki, he's serving a kind of life sentence here, if you'll forgive the expression. Enma doesn't plan on letting him go anytime soon, no matter how hard he works. It's a condition of his employment here."

"But that hardly seems fair." I had had a suspicion there was some sort of agreement between the two like that, but I hadn't given much thought to how deep it actually went. "Everyone else gets to move on eventually, no matter how bad the things they did were. What could he have done that was worse than anything anyone else here has done?"

"Even if I knew, I couldn't tell you. You know that."

So why did I ask, in other words.

Because when I really thought about it, I knew next to nothing about Tsuzuki's life, let alone whatever crimes he had committed to land himself a position in Juuocho as a shinigami, ordered to take the lives of others over and over again for the remainder of his existence. I suspected he might have killed someone. He hurt someone very badly, whatever he did, but whether it was by betraying them or worse I never knew. It wasn't my place to ask, as much as I sometimes thought it would make things easier between us. Would I want to know the whole story? Would it even change anything? It's still hard for me to believe, looking at him, that Tsuzuki could ever willfully hurt another human being, but experience has taught me that oftentimes the most gentle, most self-disciplined people are the most unpredictable. You never know if those careful smiles are hiding something darker and crueler within.

In Tsuzuki's case, I did know how fragile his exterior was. And I knew what he was capable of from watching him in the field. But at the same time, I have seen evil up-close and personal—I have felt it in me as though it were my own personal demon—and I knew that Tsuzuki was anything but the monster he thought he was.

The monster he felt—selfishly—he had to protect me from.

But I still didn't understand. If there was no hope of ever ending his sentence, and these requests were just some ritual Tsuzuki went through every ten years or so, why did he feel the need to keep the whole business from me?

"That's a personal question, isn't it, lad? God knows, I shouldn't even be talking to you about it."

But in my frustration, I was convinced the real problem lay with Tsuzuki's refusal to trust me.

—

When I slammed the folder down on his desk, he didn't look up, didn't even flinch. As if he had seen this coming a mile away. It made the words I'd been aching to say come out all the easier.

"You idiot! Are you trying to run away from me or something?"

He looked up then. There was surprise and confusion in those purple eyes of his, as if he really had no idea. "What are you talking about?"

"As if you didn't know. What, did you think I'd just figure it out on my own? That someone else around here would conveniently fill me in about that little request you put in? Or were you hoping I wouldn't notice? Did you forget I'm an empath or something?"

He turned back to the desk, and just stared at it for what seemed like several minutes, but I could tell he wasn't actually seeing it.

"It's none of your concern," he said at last.

There were half a dozen options he could have chosen from as he was sitting there staring. He could have cracked a joke, he could have made something up, smiled in that easy way of his and said in some cute voice, "Don't worry about it, Hisoka."

Instead, I got, "It doesn't have anything to do with you. Besides, it wasn't serious anyway. Not this time. Not really. And in any case, it wasn't going to go through—"

"What do you mean, 'not really'? How can filing for an application to pass on be anything _but_ serious?"

"I don't know why you're taking this so personally, Hisoka. It's nobody's business but mine what I do with my life—or . . . whatever you call this. . . ."

I must have made some indignant sound, because he turned back to me suddenly. I remember being outraged at his choice of words, even if I couldn't read anything from him. He'd gotten much better over the years we'd been together at keeping his thoughts and emotions to himself, but usually I could still read them when he was in one of his moods.

I couldn't then, and it shouldn't have bothered me so much, but right then, I really wanted to know _exactly_ what he was thinking.

"Of course, it's my business, you ass," I told him. "You're my _partner_. I don't see how it could not concern me if you're thinking about . . . about leaving." I didn't know what other word to use for it. We were already dead, and who knows what Enma had planned for him when—or if—he ever decided Tsuzuki had served his time as a shinigami. "The least you could do is talk to me about this. I told you I loved you, for god's sake."

"Yeah, I wonder about that sometimes."

He said it with a sarcasm that wasn't like him, and it hit me like a slap in the face. He didn't need to say it any more clearly than that: My idea of love and his weren't exactly congruent to one another.

He might as well have just upended a bucket of cold water on me, because I was suddenly all too aware of our audience of coworkers, and ashamed that I was so close to losing my cool in front of them.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have just let all this go—when I would have balked at the idea of getting the truth out in the open. I thought it was safer to just pretend the things that were too unpleasant to face weren't there, and hoped that maybe if I didn't acknowledge them they would go away on their own. It seems trite to say it after all these years, but the fact remains: Kyoto changed all that. I still had to fight the urge in every bone in my body to do just what I was so used to doing right then—to just drop it, let it be. But it was that kind of inaction, that do-nothing, look-the-other-way attitude, that led to requests to move on that were or weren't serious. I asked him if we could discuss it in private, and he acquiesced. Grudgingly, for once.

"Look, it's really nothing to be concerned about," he continued to profess once we were outside; and really, he didn't tell me anything the Count hadn't already. "It's just something I do every decade or so just to see if I can. Sometimes it just gets too painful continuing to exist like this. You know, watching the world change around you, feeling like everything is going to hell and there's nothing you can do about it except rob another innocent person of their soul. It hurts. Maybe you just haven't been here long enough to know what that feels like, but you will."

I wanted to tell him I already knew, to ask him who the hell he thought he was to say what I had or had not experienced, but I kept my mouth shut. He wasn't saying it to hurt me.

He smiled then. It was strange, to see that contrast. "You're the only one who's ever made me feel like there's a reason to bear it since I've been here."

But I also caused him pain. He didn't have to say it. I knew. I could tell by his smile, what he left unsaid. What it would have pained him too much to say out loud. I bore just as much responsibility for his tortured existence as anyone—maybe the most—but he couldn't exactly accuse me to my face of being the one to blame, either. "But you shouldn't have gone behind my back, asking about me. Don't look at me like that. I'm pretty sure you didn't find out about it through me."

"You could have just told me."

"I didn't want . . ." Tsuzuki sighed, long and insufferable. "I didn't want to have to try and explain it. That's personal stuff, Hisoka. Why can't you just trust me?"

Why couldn't I? It wasn't like I told him about everything that ever happened to me. But for some reason, I just couldn't let it go. "You promised me once you wouldn't leave."

"And I'm still here, aren't I?"

"Dammit, Tsuzuki, you know that's not what I mean!"

He knew—we both knew—he never had any intention of keeping that promise. He made it because at the time he had changed his mind. At the time, he found something he wanted to live for—or maybe he just couldn't bear the guilt of what it would do to me to lose him, even if he wouldn't have had to bear it for long. I don't know.

But I couldn't help thinking that as soon as the day came I wouldn't need to depend on him anymore, he would disappear.

—

So I did it before he could.

Well, that is to say, I didn't actually disappear. I took an extended vacation. I hadn't planned anything, I didn't even know where I would go or how long I would be away, I just knew after the whole mess with Tsuzuki's request that I had to get away from work and the office and him for a little while. Maybe it sounds counterintuitive given what I yelled at him for—or hypocritical; yeah, it sounds rather hypocritical in hindsight, to say the least—but I couldn't stand it anymore. I needed some room to myself. To breathe. And to think about where things stood.

That was the year I would have turned twenty-four—just two years younger than Tsuzuki was when he died. I had been a shinigami for eight years, a full third of my existence, and Tsuzuki's partner for the entirety. It was common knowledge around the office that that was the longest partnership he had had in all of his seventy-eight-year-long tenure as a shinigami, by a mile. Almost none lasted past six months; most, like Tatsumi, fizzled out after a few weeks and were lucky—or unlucky, depending on your perspective—to see a couple months with him; and there were some that didn't even make it through the first day. Granted, though, those were typically the ones whose appointments to careers as shinigami had been mistakes in the first place. It became something of a joke that being partnered with Tsuzuki was the first step in a new shinigami's training—a litmus test, if you will, to see if they deserved their placement. If they could survive a few weeks with him, they could handle anything the job threw at them.

Tsuzuki usually doesn't mind being made into an initiation ritual, laughing along with whoever it is who brings up that old joke (unless that person is Terazuma). But to me the whole thing just seems sad. After all, every day we're still working together is another record for him. I have to try not to show my frustration with him every time he wants to make a big deal out of our anniversaries because I know exactly how big a deal each one of them is for him. Each year we're together is one fewer year he spends alone, an office laughing-stock, or stuck in a miserable (or even violent, in Terazuma's case) working relationship. And each year we're together is another year Chief Konoe has someone to keep Tsuzuki on track, and to keep Tatsumi from having to confront his demons, and to keep the Gushoushin from having to be pulled away from their work to accompany him on yet another case. . . .

In so many ways, it seems, he needs me.

But do I need him?

So many times I've thought about this, and about how everyone I work with has done so much to make me feel as though I belong, as though I'm home. But if Tsuzuki suddenly weren't there, would I still feel that way? Would half of those people even have reason to be nice to me when we passed in the hall? Somehow I don't think so.

And somehow I think, if he weren't there, I wouldn't want them to treat me as kindly as they do anyway. I'd probably treat them colder than Tatsumi does, if I weren't downright rude. Not intentionally, of course, but Tsuzuki has a way of preventing me from shutting down emotionally like I've naturally been inclined to do for most of my life. I realize that when he goes away for any length of time, or when I find myself alone in the conference room wondering what if, and suddenly I start to feel like he'll never come back and wonder, panicking, what I'm going to do. Like how if you think about breathing too hard, you can't breathe at all. It's irrational, I know, and I'm not sure if it's that fact that frightens me more at times like those, or my imagination.

So why would I opt to go away, you ask, if I'm afraid of being without him?

Because sometimes you just need to step back in order to see the whole picture. At least, that's one way of looking at it. The truth, of course, is much more complicated.

—

I had the holiday coming for a while. Vacation time doesn't exactly accrue in Meifu like it does in the living world—though we get the same amount of job-related stress as the living and need the time to recover from it once in a while in order to function properly—but I still only ever used what time I did rack up when I was told to take a break, usually by Tatsumi or the chief, who tended to be better than I was at judging when I was working myself to exhaustion. I never seemed to see it—or else I subconsciously convinced myself not to—because I like working. Not the line of work, necessarily, but it's a job, and usually not a hard one if I don't think about it too much. More to the point, it keeps my mind focused on something other than my own personal troubles.

Once it was thoughts of Muraki that plagued me: what he did to me, how much I hated him, how I was going to avenge myself and defeat him. The ghost of him never entirely went away; I think it would be unnatural if it ever did. But slowly, as the years dragged on, thoughts of him were replaced by thoughts of Tsuzuki.

And, unlike Muraki, I see Tsuzuki every day. I have to work with him. Him and his feelings, which he projects like—well, like a projector. It's not hard to see where the difficulty lies, here.

And the part that really frustrates me is that I can't even help what he does to me. On the most fundamental level.

The problem with empathy is that when you feel another person's emotions as if they were your own for so long, you begin to lose sense of who they came from originally. You learn to question every thought that comes into your head, wonder, Did that come from someone else, or is it really mine? Every idea, every feeling. Every desire. . . .

Tsuzuki had been in love with me for a long time.

I don't know exactly when his feelings changed from a protective sort of care to this attraction, this longing for something more, for some intimacy neither of us really knows how or is particularly willing to give, but I knew enough to recognize early in our working relationship that a change had taken place. I recognized it in the increased seriousness behind the joking and teasing. I could feel it in his touches, that the pretense of the joke was just a front for everyone else, just an excuse to put his hand on my arm, or shoulder, or on my head like you might a little brother. It certainly wasn't for my benefit.

Well, not entirely. I never needed to say it, but somehow he must have known what I could sense from him, and how well. Despite his veneer of obliviousness, he's better at reading a person just by looking at them than anyone else I've ever known—sometimes he's even better than me, and he doesn't have the benefit of empathy—and sometimes I wonder if he even realizes how intuitive he is.

Either way, he must have realized early on that it was futile to hide his feelings from me, whatever the nature of them was. Which meant I would get a full dose of his affection if I wasn't careful, just by being in the same room with him. Or his desperation for my company when his mood turned sour. Or his—

Well, I guess they can only really be called lusts.

Just because we had this sort of mutual understanding didn't mean he had an obligation to acknowledge any of those feelings out loud. For which I must say I was grateful, even if I swore the dishonesty between us was so palpable everyone in the office could feel it.

Maybe it sounds strange to say I honestly didn't know if I returned those feelings, but I can't be the only one in the history of the world who wasn't sure if what he was feeling was really love. I might be the only one who wasn't sure only because of his tendency to soak up the emotions others are projecting, though. I never wanted to hurt Tsuzuki, whatever I did, which, where the two of us were concerned, meant I could only move in one direction: nowhere. What if the attraction I felt towards him wasn't real, I asked myself, but just a mirror of his affection for me? Wouldn't it be wrong to encourage him—wouldn't it only hurt us both—to tell him I felt the same way, when the feeling was a lie from the get-go?

But that didn't change the fact I spent one too many nights unable to sleep, bolting awake in my bed and biting my tongue to keep his name from spilling from it because of some incredibly realistic dream of him touching me, kissing me, wrapping his lips around me. . . .

Somewhere along the way I convinced myself that being with Tsuzuki like that, even if only in my imagination, should be the same as it was with Muraki—that it should be just as bad as it was with Muraki.

Reality, though, stubbornly tried to prove itself completely the opposite. It felt good. Even if it was just in my head, even if it was just a byproduct of being around him day in and out, it felt like it would be good to be with Tsuzuki like that, like it would be safe if it were in his arms. So I don't know why I felt like I had to be repulsed by him, reject him—like it was somehow okay to jerk off to this image of us in my mind at three o'clock in the morning, but god forbid I ever let those casual touches become the something more both of us—at least on some level—wanted them to be.

Maybe if it had felt the same, I wouldn't have felt bad pushing him away. Maybe if it had felt the same, I'd feel justified in treating him the way I did, maintaining my distance. There were many days I thought it would just be better if we stayed away from one another completely. For his own good and mine. If we just never saw each other again. It would be a whole lot less painful for both of us.

I would only spend every minute of every one of those days apart missing him desperately. Missing his smile, his voice, even his stupid jokes that I thought I couldn't stand. . . .

Maybe I refused to take action for so long because I knew if I moved one way or another, I'd have to take responsibility for the choice I made, and all the fallout that came with it. Whenever I came close to doing anything about it, I had only to look at Tatsumi and Tsuzuki, and the strange, screwed-up relationship they had. I honestly have no idea what happened between them—both are a complete blank on that matter—but I can tell enough to know just how fragile the trust between them is now as a result of it, how it's marred by their respective, silent guilt, and how much it pains them to be alone together.

I did not want us to be like that. I didn't want Tsuzuki's smiles to grow even more hollow than they already were, or for him to resent me when our job demanded focus and open communication, all because of one selfish misstep.

Of course, more than any of that, I didn't want him to resent himself because of me either.

So, in all those years since Kyoto, I did nothing, thinking it was the best course of action I could take in a situation like ours: just pretend everything was business as usual.

It was a lie, and I must have known even then I couldn't keep it up forever. I knew someday I was going to have to choose one path or another, and was paralyzed by the fear that any way I leaned I was going to hurt him. Sometimes I wished he would just make my decision for me, just kiss me or something before I had a chance to stop him, take us somewhere we finally wouldn't be able to go backwards from, but he never did.

It would have made him too much like Muraki.

—

We went about our job like nothing had changed, but I suppose it only stands to reason that it got to the point where it hurt, both physically and emotionally, to be around him. I spent more of my free time training with the sword and practicing my aim as a form of meditation—albeit because I knew his aversion to physical exercise would keep him from stepping foot in the dojo. But even the physical exertion wasn't enough to clear my mind of thoughts of Tsuzuki after a while. If I couldn't get away from him in body, then I jumped at the chance for new cases just so we would have something neutral to talk about—someone else's life and death and all the baggage that went with it, rather than our own.

It was around that time that I started seeing Wakaba outside of work. On those occasions when we both had a break, we would meet in Chijou for coffee or tea, sometimes lunch. That was how it started. We had never realized, working as we were in different areas of the country, how much we had in common. Namely Tsuzuki and Terazuma, who dominated our conversations at first. Listening to her stories about Terazuma only reminded me of Tsuzuki and the things he did, the quirks that annoyed me and made me smile, and I wondered if I was as transparent in my feelings when I talked about him as she was talking about her partner.

Aside from the occasional, temporary sub, which didn't really count, neither of us had ever had another partner since we came on as shinigami, so we were in the same boat, Wakaba and I—wondering if we were the only ones who felt like we did, oftentimes yearning to ditch our partners for new ones because we'd just gotten so frustrated we didn't think we could take it anymore, and secretly doubting we could survive the change.

Wondering if our affection for our respective partners was unique or just typical, something we would find again in each new working relationship. Or—given Tsuzuki and Terazuma's turbulent history with one another—if what each of us had really was the frighteningly rare thing we dreaded it was. But neither of us ever said as much out loud.

In any case, it was apparent to both of us we shared a common bond, even if it was under a rather thin pretext. We made time to see each other more frequently, which usually entailed playing video games at Wakaba's apartment. I was never that particular. At those times we both felt like teenagers—that is, like we were still alive and enjoying our teen years, spending them the way kids do, rather than being the adult souls bound in adolescent bodies that we were, stuck with all the awkwardness that came with them forever. We each thought of the other as a good friend and confidant. We cooked together. And we told our partners exactly what we were doing when they got jealous of our spending so much time together.

I would sometimes feel guilty that I wasn't pulling my weight in our relationship, though. I didn't have much in the way of interests—at least, none that weren't generally solitary—but it hardly seemed to matter since Wakaba had plenty to spare. Whether it was the cooking and video games, or photography, or needing a model for the men's clothes she was learning to sew. None of these things particularly interested me, but I found myself unconsciously trying to like them while I was around her. I had never praised anyone, but before long I was complimenting her on some outfit she had made, or having a long discussion on the art of photography and setting up the composition of a shot, or some other thing I didn't think I cared about. She made me feel like an active participant in our friendship, even if I was rather passive in reality. None of my unsocial character flaws even fazed her. She just plowed right through every indifferent remark I raised in my defense. I began to think I might be falling in love with her.

It wasn't like how I considered my feelings for Tsuzuki, wondering how many of them were just reflections of his emotions and not my own. With Wakaba—at least, so I told myself—that wasn't the case. Because I didn't know how she really felt about me. I didn't actually know whether she felt anything more for me than what she showed on the surface, and maybe, I think, a part of me didn't care to find out.

It had to come to a head someday. One afternoon as we were talking, I said something—I've forgotten what it was now—that made her laugh and say, "You don't know much about girls' bodies, do you?"

I was used to her frankness by now, but not to being frank myself. I blushed. "I guess not."

Her eyes widened. "Have you ever even been with a girl? I mean romantically."

"Don't you know?" I started to say, until I remembered the histories of our deaths were confidential. If she had heard, then she wouldn't have asked. Nor was I particularly eager to tell her about Muraki.

Or Kakyouin Tsubaki, for that matter. However interested we may have been in each other for those few short days, it hadn't ended well, and needless to say, my part in that ending was a matter I was still loath to face even in the privacy of my own thoughts. There was no way I was going to bring her up to Wakaba.

Seeing me open and shut my mouth like a fish, she said by way of apology, "Or a guy, for that matter."

That just made me blush even worse. "Whatever gave you the impression I was like that?"

"Well, it's just . . . I guess I sort of thought . . . Aren't you and Tsuzuki—"

"No." In the back of my mind, however, I was calling myself a liar. I couldn't rule out intention just because there was nothing to show for it. But still, I answered too quickly. "I can understand why you'd think that, he jokes about it all the time, but that's all it is. A joke."

"Oh." She looked down.

"Why do you care anyway?"

As soon as I said it I knew the answer. We were both lonely. Me with my fear, and she with her partner who was not only older, but could never be physically intimate with her—at least, not as long as he was possessed by his parasitic shikigami.

Except, unlike me, Wakaba actually knew what she wanted to do about it.

"Maybe it's just that you're so good at the sims," she said with a lopsided smile that made her words seem anything but genuine, "I figured you must have had a lot of experience with the girls at school."

"It's just empathy. Besides, these programs aren't hard to figure out," I grumbled, at which she giggled. The sparkle returned to her bicolor eyes, even if it was at my expense, but that was enough to satisfy me.

Still, I couldn't escape the sensation of her loneliness. It seeped into me, only magnifying my own. I don't know if it was that that made me do it, or my half-convincing myself I was in love with her, or maybe some combination of the two, but I suggested we have sex.

It didn't sound right, like I was asking her whether she wanted milk in her coffee or something trivial like that, but the offer was out before I could blink, and there was no taking it back. I can't say what came over me, but at the time I thought of it as a kind of charity, albeit a warped kind of charity. Maybe I thought that by doing her this favor I could end her loneliness—her loneliness which, ironically, wouldn't leave me alone—and vicariously that which plagued me. She answered just as scientifically as I had asked, "Okay. I guess, sure. When? Now?"

We debated the best place to do it, whether a condom was necessary if we were already dead, things like that, and set up a time, all as if we were setting up an experiment. In a way, I guess, that's precisely what it was. Neither of us really knew what we wanted or how to go about getting it—whatever experience we had had in life left us completely unprepared—and yet we still acted as though we two souls of the deceased had something to lose.

We kissed. And kissed, waiting for our adolescent hormones to kick in, confident we still had them since we seemed to have the rest of the problems that came with being trapped in our teenage bodies. I'm not sure what we expected it to be like, but somehow we dragged ourselves through the motions. I laid her down on the couch, she ran her fingers through my hair, and her stiff, homemade skirt rode up as she rubbed a leg against mine. I slid my hand beneath her blouse. I could feel her pulse racing under my palm, and the heat of her blood—enough for the moment to make me forget we were dead. Her pelvis was hard against mine, her breasts by contrast disarmingly soft, the skin tightening at my touch. I waited to feel something, anything, but nothing came.

I looked up into her face and was able to see her clearly then, as though I had been talking to her with my head down this entire time, and I was shocked by what I saw. Her eyes were still closed as she waited for me to make another move, and she didn't say a word. She didn't have to for me to know that, no matter what I did, no matter how I touched her, she would only be thinking of Terazuma.

Strangely, that knowledge came as a relief. I wasn't sad to see what little desire I had managed to work up go with it. How could I be intimate with a person who was thinking of someone else during the act? For that matter, when I was wishing I was with someone else as well?

When I failed to make another move, she opened her eyes and narrowed them at me in concern. All of a sudden, she seemed so much older than fourteen—as old as she should have been, if not older. "What's wrong, Hisoka? You're not— I mean, you don't seem—"

"You don't really want to do this, do you?"

She opened her mouth to automatically deny it, then closed it on second thought, her whole body relaxing under me. "I don't think I can," she whispered, like it was some shameful secret she was confiding in me. "I really thought I wanted to—and you're a great guy, Hisoka, really—but I'm sorry . . ."

"Don't be. I'm the one who's sorry. It was stupid of me to suggest it. I really don't know how I thought it would help."

"It's not that. I mean, I know I said I would, but it's just—"

"No. It's okay." She didn't have to say it. It wasn't like she had hurt my feelings by rejecting me, or like it had been too big a deal to back out of if one of us wanted to. If anything, I shuddered to think of what we might have done, had we forced ourselves to go through with it, to see it to its end, and made a decision we could not undo. "It wouldn't be right. I'm not really the one you want to be with anyway."

I sat up on the sofa, and she did the same, straightening her skirt and holding herself close, suddenly modest. Careful not to let her shoulder touch mine as we both stared straight ahead at the far wall, if not at our knees.

"I just don't know," she said after a long while, "if there's ever going to be a time I can be with him. You know?"

Yeah, I did. More than she knew. But I wasn't ready or willing to say it.

She sighed. "How am I supposed to . . . How am I supposed to live like this, Hisoka? I don't understand why, if I love him as much as I do, it should hurt this much just being around him. I mean, shouldn't that be enough? Do I really have to touch him to be happy? I can't even tell him how I feel, because I know he won't give me an honest response, and I don't know if it's because he can't, or he doesn't want to hurt me—or maybe he doesn't even feel the same way I do. Maybe I've just been reading him wrong this entire time. If that's the way it is . . . god . . . I don't know if I even want to know. I'd be too afraid to find out."

—

It was while we were in the middle of a case that I decided to tell Tsuzuki I was taking a break. There was nothing extraordinary about the case itself—just another soul who had gotten itself lost on the way to Meifu and was causing some trouble for the living—and maybe that was what ultimately made up my mind for me. Because it was just more of the same.

I broke the news to Tsuzuki over dinner on what must have been our second night in that town—that after this, I was taking a leave of absence.

"Really? It's about time. I would say you work yourself to death, but—"

"Ugh. That's bad, Tsuzuki, even for you." I reached for my cup of tea, feeling the urge to wash out the bad taste his pun had left in my mouth. "And one of us has to in this partnership."

"Yeah, yeah. So, where are you going?"

Cup to my lips, I froze. I hadn't given it that much thought. I'd been angsting the last few days about how I was going to break my decision to him without hurting him, I hadn't thought about details like that. They were important, just not to me, I guess.

I don't know why I was so surprised by his reaction, either—or rather, his lack of one. It was only a vacation. Everyone took them. It wasn't like I was running away. Was it?

"I . . . I don't know yet," I admitted, and took a long drink.

"I know the leaves are supposed to be nice this time of year in Hakone, and Ise's always nice for relaxing. . . . But now's the best time for seafood up north. It's in season, so you can eat more for the same amount of money!"

"Tsuzuki . . . Is that all you ever think about?"

"Hey, even you can't complain about fresh—and _real_—reasonably-priced king crab."

"Yeah. You have a point there."

It was almost enough to make me laugh. Or cry. I couldn't believe it. He was actually helping me plan my getaway—when he was the reason I felt I had to get away.

Some of my anxiety must have shown through, either on my face or in my voice. But his smile didn't waver as he said, "Something on your mind, Hisoka?"

At times like those, I wonder if this empathy of mine works both ways. Not only does Tsuzuki know when something's bothering me, but he seems to know when I really don't want to talk about it.

But there always comes a point when I just can't pretend anymore, and at that point he won't rest until he's gotten the story out of me. So I had to lie.

"It's just been a long time since I've had a proper vacation," I told him. And after the words left my mouth, I actually believed them. "I mean, we took that trip to Hokkaido with Tatsumi and Watari, but that was something completely different. I can't remember the last time I had the opportunity to travel by myself. All those other breaks the chief made me take I usually just spent hanging around home."

"You having second thoughts?"

"It's not that. . . ." I sighed. I wasn't really sure how to put it myself—at least, without telling the absolute, brutal truth. "I am looking forward to having the chance to get my thoughts together."

"You don't sound that excited about it. You know if something's weighing on your mind, you can always talk to me about it, right?"

For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. It was incredible to me the way he saw through everything I said and yet didn't at the same time. Maybe it was just a sort of knee-jerk reaction with him, to say things like this, to offer his services to a friend, and maybe he wasn't as good at reading me as I feared. Then again, maybe that easy smile was for his benefit, not mine. Could he read the guilt on my face? Did he know I was doing this to get away from _him_?

But I told myself there was no way he could know that, and put that worry behind me.

"I'm looking forward to seeing all these places I never got to when I was alive, too," I was quick to say when I had recovered my thoughts. "You know, all these sites that you read about in history books in high school that I've just never really had time for since I've been here."

"And yet you haven't decided what those places are yet."

"I . . . I have some idea—"

"Yeah? Name one."

I mumbled the first thing to come to mind. "The Meiji emperor's tomb?"

Tsuzuki made a sound of disapproval at that so loud I thought the whole restaurant would hear. "Boring! You finally get some time off to explore the country on your own, and you want to go visit some mossy tomb of someone you never cared about? You don't want to go hiking or relax at a spa—"

"Do I look like the spa type to you?"

I was beginning to lose my patience with him, but when he laughed I had to realize how trivial our conversation sounded. Like just another one of our petty arguments where he started whining and I gave him the cold shoulder and we both came away satisfied that justice had been served. How could I impress on him that right now, with this subject, I was trying to be serious, without having to bring my actual reasons out in the open? He had already let me dig myself deeper into a hole with all my excuses. I wonder if he was even aware of what he was doing to me.

"Look," I said, this time quite a bit shorter than I'd intended, "this is my own vacation this time, so wherever I decide to go is my decision, all right? I don't have to justify it to you, just because we're partners or something. I know you always want to be involved in everything I do, but did it ever occur to you that some things I might just not want to talk about? I still have that right, don't I?"

I stuffed a bite of food in my mouth more because I didn't want to say any more on the matter than because I actually had an appetite left to fill. I didn't want to hear any more of his jokes either, even if he did mean well, and I could see them all dropping by the wayside with his smile. It hadn't been the most polite way of putting my feelings out there—it was more than he deserved for just trying to make conversation—but how else was he going to get the clue to drop the subject?

I probably did myself more harm than good in the end. I could practically see the questions forming in his mind after I'd said all that. Was I taking this vacation so I could do something I didn't want him to know about? Something that might be against the laws of Meifu? Was I going to go and meet someone, or get myself involved in something dangerous? Should he be worried about me? Did this mean I was going to be out of touch for the entirety of my leave? Was I leaving because of something he did?

None of that was actually something I could feel coming off of Tsuzuki—he had shut himself off from me somewhere around that mention of the Meiji emperor's tomb—but, like I said, I could all but see the wheels turning. And it wasn't hard to guess what he must have been thinking. God knows, that's what I would have been wondering about him if our positions were reversed.

And I was pretty sure I'd hit the nail on the head when he said, softly, "I didn't realize it was a sensitive subject."

He had lowered his gaze and his chopsticks, poking something around on his plate having apparently arrived at the same conclusion I had: that the best way to drop the subject was to become suddenly all too interested in the food.

But even if he was shielding his emotions, I could sense enough of them in his body language, and it was too much to just let slide without saying anything.

"I'm sorry, Tsuzuki, I shouldn't have . . . You didn't deserve that."

"No, _I'm_ sorry. Really. I should have realized earlier that you really didn't want to talk about it and not pried so much. This is your vacation and I don't want it to be ruined because of something careless I said."

I blinked up at him. He was apologizing for distressing me, but it felt like it should have been the other way around.

"You are going to enjoy yourself, right?"

It took me a moment to come back to myself and answer. "M-m. Yeah. I'm gonna be so relaxed I won't want to come back."

I hadn't said it with the enthusiasm those words deserved, but it made Tsuzuki break into a grin anyway.

"Now _that's_ something I would have to see to believe. Hey, it got me thinking. . . ."

And then he launched into some other more trivial subject. I don't even remember what anymore because even as I was listening, I was still thinking about what I had said to him, and how easily he had shrugged it off. Too easily for me to believe he would just forget what had passed between us.

—

A large part of why I was so reluctant to talk about my upcoming trip was that I didn't want Tsuzuki—or anyone else, for that matter—to know I was going to Kamakura. My hometown. Even though it had stopped feeling like home more than a decade ago. I made reservations in Hakone for appearances' sake—and in case anyone asked me about my trip. For that matter, I didn't even plan to go to Kamakura. I just knew in the back of my mind as I counted down the days to the start of my vacation that that was where I would end up.

Like something was pulling me toward it. Maybe it was because of the night I met Muraki. Maybe it had more to do with the family I had left behind. Or it could have been as simple as a nostalgic sort of curiosity, a desire—no, more like an involuntary, maddening itch to go back with the different, more removed sort of perspective that time gives you and see if anything finally made sense.

Not that there was anything there I missed. Or anyone. But something drew me there, like a gaping hole in my soul that needed to be filled. An unanswered question. If only subconsciously, I knew there was something missing from my own memory of my death—some clue that would help me to understand what had happened to myself, and what I had been, that had remained hidden from me all this time.

Becoming a shinigami is a tricky thing. You leave your memories of your life behind you when you take on your new semi-corporeal form. Or, perhaps it's fairer to say a sort of wall is erected between them and you. Sometimes you can see through it; sometimes images are blurry like through frosted glass; but most of the time the wall is opaque, or the other side is obscured by a one-way mirror, and you're too preoccupied with the here-and-now to really care enough to investigate what's on the other side. Eventually, for most shinigami, the memories come back, in bits and pieces until you have a more or less complete picture of the person you were, but by then it's like all that stuff happened to someone else.

It almost has to be that way, in order for you to function in your new capacity, in a new existence. Like they say our brains have built-in mechanisms to block out our memories of being born—otherwise, the trauma would cripple us for the rest of our lives—shinigami have to "forget" the moment of their death in order not to destroy themselves as soon as they're made. Only later can the details slowly trickle back in, the idea being that, by that time, you're so comfortable in your new "life," the knowledge of your actual death will feel so distant and disconnected from your present reality, it will no longer be able to hurt you.

But some of us never get to be that lucky. Some of us, like me and Tsuzuki, have so many skeletons in our past—either forced on us or put there by our own selves—that someone decided it was better for us not to know. Whether that was Enma, though, or something in our own subconscious, a safety measure hardwired into us for self-preservation—well, it's impossible to ever know for sure, isn't it?

But the not-knowing still sticks with you, follows you around like your own shadow, getting longer the darker your knowledge becomes. It gets to the point you feel like you _have_ to know or it will kill you.

And then the knowing itself will kill you all over again.

That's how it was with me and Muraki. I thought that once I had all the pieces of my death reassembled into some graspable whole, my problems would be solved. In reality, that was only when they started, and there was no way I could have been prepared for the pain that followed as I was forced to relive my own torture and death, again and again. Not to mention the unquenchable rage that that nurtured within me—for my murderer and for everything that was taken away from me, and every injustice that was done to me. That rage has never really gone away. It just recedes into the background, until the next time I'm confronted with the memory of that night.

So why would I go to Kamakura, where I lived the first thirteen years of my life, and where I was brutally murdered, if I was only going to subject myself to reliving all the agony of those last moments yet again?

Because where my life up until that point was concerned, I still had questions left completely unanswered.

In my time as a shinigami, I had learned everything I could possibly want to know—and much more than I ever did—about Muraki's time with me. But I still knew next to nothing about the time I had spent with my family, growing up in a house I had only the vaguest, shadowy recollections of, with a mother and father who were only faceless forms to me now, hazy and in shadow when I tried to look at them above the waist. Had I repressed my memory of them? Or had those memories been systematically blocked by Enma when I became a shinigami? I couldn't be sure, but I suspected it was some combination of both. There was something in my past, I reasoned, that I'd kept myself from remembering, and something the establishment I now worked for didn't want me to know.

And I hated that.

More than any filial desire to know the people who gave me life, I hated that there were forces beyond my control deliberately trying to keep me in the dark. I've always pushed back when I was told "no," always wanted to do the very thing that was forbidden to me, if only to see for myself _why_ it should be forbidden. It's always been in my nature to push, push, push. . . .

And nothing cuts to the heart of what my nature is than the knowledge of what I was. I needed that. It was the next step to making me whole.

I harbored no illusions that it wouldn't be as difficult as confronting the truth about my death, or my ultimately futile first attempt to win a guardian spirit. I was prepared for a struggle, for pain.

I wasn't prepared for the emptiness.

—

It was a bizarre feeling, to say the least, walking around the town that I had grown up in, a town I still knew my way around but whose every street corner felt eerily new to me. Alien. I happened across my old middle school, but it felt so small and dark to me now. Hostile. I couldn't believe I had actually attended classes there once, if only for half a year, and that all those little flashes of familiarity weren't just some strange dream, a late-night TV movie I had watched half-asleep and mistaken for a memory from my own life. The bakery my mother would take me to sometimes, on those special occasions we would go into Kamakura proper, or the park with the slide in the shape of an elephant—had it all really looked this way all these years?

All these places I had vague memories of once frequenting appeared in front of me, yet I could hardly approach them without feeling that queer sensation, like an astronaut who's landed on some distant planet and found it looking just like home, down to the last detail. The only detail that can't be replicated is the _feel_ of a place, the emotions, and that was one detail that just felt wrong. It felt like I shouldn't have been there. That maybe I had never been there to begin with. If I had, would I really feel so numb?

Yet somehow, the stronger that feeling stuck with me, the more I knew I was right to have come.

The city and the hills surrounding it are full of temples. And, with nothing else to do, biding my time until I could figure out why I'd come back, I visited them one by one, playing tourist in my old hometown. School groups were getting their pictures taken with the giant Buddha. Older folks visiting from out of town and foreigners with huge backpacks were washing their money at the Benten shrine. I paid my respects to the Kannon at the Hasedera, and had a cup of tea beside the temple bell at the Engakuji, and stuck to the busy trails. I might prefer my solitude generally, but I had no desire to be alone among the dense trees that covered just about everything off the beaten path, no matter how beautiful the colors might have been at that time of year. There was something about the forest that remained too dark even for my comfort. Something, I think, that reminded me—and not in a good way—of home, and of the older traditions that had always seemed so important to father, more ancient and mist-shrouded than anything open to tourists.

Besides, there was something to be said for the comfort of the crowd. Listening to a conversation between friends at the teahouse or watching others soak in the peace of the landscape actually allowed me to relax. Maybe I've gotten better at controlling my empathy over the years, but I do think that it actually helped my own mood to be surrounded by the emotional white noise of a thousand strangers enjoying themselves, without forcing myself to concentrate on any single one.

I suppose I could have made myself invisible to the living people around me—considering it was my hometown, and being there carried the risk of being recognized, that would have only been wise—but I preferred to be seen. And, subsequently, to blend into the crowd. I can't really explain such an uncharacteristic urge except to say that if I didn't make myself visible and tangible, I felt like I might disappear into those woods and the rocks and all the languages and feelings that surrounded me, that it might be like I never even existed. I even caught myself feeling relief when couples asked me to take pictures of them in front of landmarks with their cameras, or schoolgirls stared at me as we passed. It might sound like a contradiction, but even though I needed to be by myself, I didn't want to be alone.

I needed some assurance that I was really there, perhaps even more so in a place I knew I was not supposed to be. In lieu of this strange feeling that I didn't belong in this place, I at least needed the comfort that I belonged to the human race, even if it was only ironically, only after I had passed out of the world of the living and become something . . . different. Separate. Something other.

The first night, I was lucky to find a cheap hotel that had some vacant rooms. I wasn't picky. If they had a separate room and bed, and took my money, that was good enough for me. Tsuzuki would have scolded me for skipping dinner, but I really wasn't hungry that night either. (It wasn't as though I _needed_ food.) And even if I had been, I had no particular desire to go looking around for a place to eat.

I spent the evening on the beach instead. The autumn sun had set behind the mountains hours ago, and it was pitch black and freezing next to the water, but the cold air helped clear my head of all I had seen and felt that day. It allowed me to gather my thoughts together, file them in the appropriate places, and recharge my defenses before I made the trip I dreaded but knew I had to take.

The trip back home.

To that ancient house where I'd been imprisoned for the better part of my life, where neither my parents nor the maids had been allowed to say anything to me about the mysterious terrors that would keep the household up some nights.

Into the woods and thick brush of the grounds that, even when I was a child, filled me with a dark, cold fear that something was lurking in them, biding its time, like the pulsing heart of a volcano before it erupts.

And into that old grove of cherry trees. . . .

I wasn't sure which I was looking forward to less.

—

I dreamed that night of my old middle school. Though I'd only attended class there for a few months, the classrooms and hallways were vivid enough in my memory that the whole place came back. The old-varnishy smell of the hardwood hallway floors when the sunlight hit them. The bright crunch of gravel under my feet in the archery field behind the gym. The sudden echo of laughter that even in a dream had the ability to tie my stomach up in knots. . . .

All those people are gone now, I told myself when I woke up. Graduated and grown up, moving on with their lives. How many of them would even remember me if we passed on the street? I vanished from their lives so soon after coming into them, who could be expected to remember someone like me?

I was always a loner. I knew no other way to be. Until then, I was essentially home-schooled in a tiny, ancient village school house among a handful of other village children—who barely talked to me, and when they did play with me, were distant and fearful or cruel.

When—after much debate between my parents on the matter, I remember that much—I was allowed the great privilege of attending middle school in Kamakura, I passed through my classes like a ghost. My grades were better than most, but my name seldom topped the list of my class's rankings. Maybe I just never applied myself as much as I could have. I remember spending most of my time studying, but I never felt like I was expending an extraordinary amount of effort on schoolwork. It was simply an escape from the world, something I did so I wouldn't have to think about my own life, or feel lonely. No different from the playmates and stories I invented for myself as a child: So I wouldn't have to think about who I was or what I was a part of, or where I was going.

And it worked. I never did. I might have envied the other kids I'd see walking together and enjoying one another's company, but there wasn't anyone whose company I particularly desired to be in. When it came down to it, if I felt anything other than indifference towards anyone, it was usually resentment. Not that it wasn't deserved, I told myself. Did I ever reject any offers of friendship? Quite the opposite. I would have welcomed them, if anyone had made offers. At least, that's what I told myself. But the point is moot, because no one ever did.

What they did make were not-so-secret comments behind my back about my eyes being such a strange shade of green, or about me being behind the other boys in physical development, and they distrusted me for being a Kurosaki, coming from that village. I know I was aloof, but they said I acted like I was better than all of them; and why would anyone want to be friends with someone like that?

My father and his brother often talked of our family's superiority, something in our ability to trace our line back to the middle ages. It must have been passed down to them from their father, and perhaps I got it from them in turn, like a genetic disease, developing in me without any conscious effort on my part. I hated the men in my family for their blind obsession with lineage, but I also hated my classmates for keeping their distance from me because of what they heard about our line—all those whispers about ghosts and curses for some distant ancestor's sins. I could not help who I was any more than they could help who they were, and I hated that they weren't able to see past stupid superstitions.

Although, at the same time, I think, I grabbed on to that anger, that hatred for their distrust, and made it my reason for being. In a way, I embraced it, and, just like my father, used it to justify my sense of otherness. Maybe I even believed I was better for it. It was easy being what they wanted me to be. Easier than trying to change, anyway—easier than reaching out, and falling short every time.

So I channeled my frustration into archery and kendo. I hated how much weaker I was than the other kids my age, and taking up those traditional forms of martial arts, forms I didn't have to use my feet or fists or grapple anyone to be good at, made me feel that much more in control of my own body, and my own destiny. I might not have been able to shoot a basket, or hit a home run, but I could hit a target better than most. If I had to, I thought, I could strike an opponent down in battle, like the hero who founded our clan. No wars were ever won with baseball bats, but arrows and swords had served the samurai class for centuries.

A lot of good it did me. For all that practice, I was useless against Muraki, and my own fear. And none of it was the least bit helpful in preparing me for my own latent demons.

—

I must have been around eight or nine when I first started reading people's emotions. Or, at least, that was when I first became aware of it.

Of course, for a long time, I didn't understand what I was doing, or that it was something that no one else could do. It started out as sporadic incidents, like all of a sudden I would feel the jealousy or boredom or admiration of one of the children sitting next to me in class, and it would feel just as if it were my own. I'd wonder why I started feeling that way when I couldn't logically see what had brought the emotion on. I began to think there was something wrong with something in my body—or worse, that I was going crazy.

My mother would often say that I seemed to know just when she needed cheering up, just like a little dog, but I never thought twice about it. It's just the sort of thing mothers say about their children, and I didn't feel any different. She certainly was never the kind of woman whose emotional state was difficult to read. So I never made the connection. I never thought that I was particularly intuitive with her. I certainly never thought what I felt while sitting in class, or the way it made me feel to see mother on one of her down days, were in any way related.

Then one day, I reached out to take a test back from my teacher, and, like an electric shock rippling down the paper, I felt an overwhelming sense of resentment. Resentment for our class and his own lot, being trapped in our backwards little town teaching it, resentment for my parents—and for me in particular, who apparently he had always thought of as an ungrateful snob of a child and the source of all his troubles.

I was stunned. As if I were seeing myself through his eyes, through the filter of his own thoughts and experience, a tide of self-loathing suddenly crashed over me. It was too much for my childhood ego to take. I don't know how I managed to make it out of that classroom without shaking and crying for the shame I felt. It must have been sheer shock that kept my face straight in my teacher's presence.

But even then, I failed to understand what was happening, that these were not isolated incidents, and I was not imagining these things. At that point, I couldn't begin to imagine how it all worked, and that rather than me just knowing things, the emotions of others were seeping into me, pushing and pulling me in ways I had no control over.

For all I thought I had grown up, I was still so much a sheltered child then. I had no way of knowing that the changes taking place inside me were something I needed to repress, or at very least keep to myself, a secret not to be shared with or trusted to anyone. How could I possibly have known that?

Until I learned it through my own experience. Until the secret slipped out, and there was no way I could ever cover it up again.

—

It was shortly before my thirteenth birthday. The second term of my first year in a real private school in the city had just begun, and to celebrate the success of my first term—or so the story went—my parents arranged a small get-together at the house. There weren't many guests, just my uncle Iwao and his wife and a few of his connections, all folks in high places in society. None of them were there for my benefit, even if that was the pretense for gathering them there. I dressed in my school uniform; mother and father in their best kimono, and our guests likewise. Our house had always been dark, the weight of the ages constantly being pressed upon it, like layers of sediment trying to preserve it for future generations; and that evening had that air of a throwback to eras long past, like something from an old black-and-white movie. I remember that impression clearly.

And just like an old movie, the conversation bored me. Our guests tired pretty soon of asking me questions about school—which I was thankful for—but I wasn't allowed to leave the room even after that, and suffered through dinner feeling tense, like there was a huge knot in my stomach, or something was pinching my ear to keep me awake.

At some point, I realized my anxiety had nothing to do with me. One of uncle's associates' wives was having an affair, and didn't want her husband, sitting next to her, to know what she had only recently done about the baby. I didn't know how I knew that. I just knew that I did. With the same utter certainty that I knew the sky was blue and water wet.

And worse. The woman's husband had lost a large sum of money on a bet at some baccarat club—whose hostesses he'd hooked up with on more than one occasion himself—and was stealing from his company to make up for it. The other man just thought about getting drunk on father's sake and having sex with girls—girls my age, girls that kind of looked like me, except with perky little breasts and without dicks between their legs, but even that might not be so bad if they felt the same when you put it in them.

Uncle's thoughts weren't twisted in that sort of way, but the resentment I felt from him was almost more overpowering than the rest. He hated father so much, for this farce of a dinner party, where he couldn't even play the host for these louts he'd invited because of some cruel decision of grandfather's. And for me, for the disappointment that I was, in physique and personality and my lack of accomplishments.

And for what he'd become himself, for being the first-born and yet passed over as heir to the Kurosaki family—only to see his brother make one rotten decision after another, first marrying that woman, who gave him this sickly waif in place of a son. . . . What sin had he committed to deserve such a disgrace? Surely nothing that couldn't be corrected. He'd killed before, shot plenty of birds and deer on his hunts, could it be so different killing a man? There was that one time, when father had been out of town . . . and it hadn't been so hard. In a way, it had even felt good, a relief even, finishing the deed. He could do it again, if he had to do it. If it became necessary. If it was his duty. . . .

Thankfully, whatever mother and father were feeling at the time, I couldn't tell. They held their emotional cards close to their chests, assuming in front of others the airs they thought people wanted to see, playing their roles so well they managed to fool themselves. They were even so good at hiding things from each other, I never could tell if they were in love, or ever had been. But that night, I had more than enough on my plate without having to deal with the overflow from them as well.

Usually I had to touch someone in order to feel what they were feeling. But that night, for some reason, maybe the sheer amount of anxious energy in the room, all I needed to do was sit beside them. As the hours progressed, it only got worse and worse, as the distance between what was said and the truth trapped underneath grew more and more strained. Uncle spoke of filial piety, while his pervert friend went on about the virtues of instructing young minds as a high school teacher. I couldn't eat more than a bite of dinner. I wanted to vomit, I was cramped up so much inside by their hypocrisy. And when the other couple spoke of their devotion to each other and wanting to start a family, I couldn't keep it bottled up inside me any longer. I felt like if I did a moment more, I was going to explode.

I called them all liars. Though I think the cheating couple got the brunt of it. They'd been controlling the conversation just then, so it was their secrets that spilled out of me in the greatest detail.

To her credit, the wife was a decent actress. To a point. "Darling, you don't honestly believe I'd do that to you, do you? He's obviously making it up," she told her husband when the initial shock at my outburst wore off. She even laughed a little, nervously, looking to my mother for sympathy. "He's of an age for it. Isn't that right, Rui-san?"

When her husband could come up with nothing to say, her forced smile fell. "What? Why don't you deny it? You're not saying it's— You mean it's _true?_" She hit him, and screamed at him, called him all sorts of names and threatened to kill him. And when he accused her of doing the things that I'd said she had, she no longer cared how it made her look. She rubbed it in his face like a dog's nose in shit.

Then she blamed me.

My uncle tried to gain control the situation. He said there was no reason for me to say these things about anyone. I couldn't have known anything, unless someone had told me. "Who told you these lies, Hisoka?"

"You all did," I said. To me, whether I heard it from their mouths or their souls—it made no difference. It was still true. I didn't know why _I_ should be the one blamed for telling the truth.

Everyone was shouting at once, mother and father among them, trying their best to assure their guests they had not set me up to humiliate the rest of the party. These revelations had come as just as much of a shock to them. Everyone denied ever saying a word to me—and why would they blab such dark secrets to a kid of thirteen?

I just know, I kept saying to them over and over again, and why didn't they believe me? That was the truth of it. _I just knew._

Mother laughed. The child's ill, he's been sickly all his life, she told our company, quite a turnaround from the intuitive, lovely boy she'd always bragged about to her friends. You have to forgive him. He doesn't know what he's saying. He has a history of acting out, being an only child—imaginary friends and all that. And who could blame him, growing up in this village, with the things people say around here? He doesn't know the difference between fact and fiction half the time.

But I did. I told her so. And then, the way she looked at me in that moment, I knew the truth of it.

The words slipped out before I had time to think about what they might mean: _You're not my mother._

She slapped me. There. In front of everyone. The cheating couple, the pervert teacher, my uncle and his wife. "And you're not my son!"

Everyone stared in shock. Father feared a dark truth on the verge of emerging from where it had been buried, and uncle seemed to suspect; but what he suspected, what father feared, I couldn't know. My ability, my curse—whatever you want to call it—it was like a light that had blown out with that slap. I knew what had happened, how I'd gotten to that point, sitting on the floor holding my stinging face, but now it seemed like it had happened to someone else. Like it had happened in an old movie.

Uncle saw the guests out. He ushered them quickly from the room, apologizing through his teeth, while mother—in her own kind of apology—tried desperately to set it right: "That's not my son," she told father, hoping he would see the difference in her meaning. "That's not my Hisoka talking. You have to believe me. There's no way he could _know_ things like that. I'm telling you, that's not like him!"

Then what was it like, father asked her.

She didn't know. She shook her head, and grasped at the only explanation that made sense to her: "A demon."

—

I never went back to school after that night. For a while, father promised that when I was well enough, once they had figured out what ailed me and corrected the problem, I would be able to resume my education in Kamakura.

But days passed, then weeks, one attempt after another to "fix" my condition ending in disappointment for them and illness for me. I only scared the doctors with the things I knew about them, and each test, each therapy session, each new regimen only left me feeling weak and susceptible to whatever bug was floating around at the time.

And in the meantime, my powers of empathy did not go away. If anything, without some other sort of stimulus to distract me from my thoughts, I became even more open to the feelings of those around me. They tormented me, pained me, and none more so than the terror that stowed away aboard every person who came near me. Terror that what I had, what afflicted me, was not something that medical science could explain but something more unusual, more unnatural. Something that even the least superstitious still feared in the pit of his subconscious: something ancient, dark, and evil.

One doctor, suspecting a kind of schizophrenia was to blame, tried to treat me with electroshock therapy. But I screamed so much for days afterwards, my whole head a cacophony of pain and voices, that my parents took me away and threatened to sue the man for malpractice. If I had been in my own mind at the time, I might have taken that as a sign they still loved me.

But what they did after that suggested otherwise.

Our family's house was as massive as it was old, with twisted corridors and cellars that hadn't been used for hundreds of years. There were cells in one half of the house where, generations ago, family members who suffered mental illness were kept by their saner loved ones—to protect the afflicted from themselves as much as the public. That was where I ended up. And it was for my own good, they told me, just like my ancestors must have been told, over and over so I should never forget it. It wouldn't be so bad. My room got sunlight in the late afternoon, and a maid brought me meals at the same times as before my illness—albeit "adjusted" so as not to cause "flare-ups" of my condition. If I asked for books, sometimes I even got them, if they weren't deemed too suggestive for my fragile state of mind. And besides, all this was only temporary—just until I was feeling better.

But the room was dank and cold, and what little light I got came through wooden bars, always reminding me I was in a cage. I was let out a few times a week for supervised walks in the garden, but always ended up back in my cell, no matter how improved my condition seemed. And the maid who brought my meals had either been instructed not to talk to me, or was too afraid. Who knew what they were saying about my "disease," what rumors were getting around the village?

Even my parents had no idea what had caused my illness, or how to cure it. Father had shut himself off to me long before, but he was even more silent and impassive now, and would only stand outside my cage and watch me on the bad days, the days my head felt like it would explode from all the stuff packed in it. As if I were an animal, and people like him just didn't talk to animals, because what would be the point? Sometimes he would think about snakes, all sorts of snakes and serpent forms, and about blood and darkness, and I was ashamed that I had done this to him, that he would think of me as something so low, something that only deserved to be crushed. Something that, had I been anything other than a human being, and his son, he might have put down. He would talk to the doctors who occasionally came to see me, even an exorcist or two—no doubt at my mother's request—but I never heard him say a word to me. All I had to go on were those disturbing images.

He said plenty to mother, though. I would hear them down the hall as he tried unsuccessful to console her. Every time she came to visit me, no matter how civil she was to my face, no matter how much she claimed to pray every day that I would get better, her disgust and fear and anger would hit me like a never-ending stab to the gut, and I would hear her wailing outside my room.

Always the same thing:

_That is_ not _my son. _

_That is not_ my _Hisoka._

_It's a monster. It must be. That's not the child I gave birth to!_

_There's only one solution for this, Nagare. Your brother—he says it must be done. There are ways . . . He wouldn't have to suffer. And it won't be the first time . . . in this family. . . . You do trust your brother, don't you?_

Or other times: _Don't let them take him. My child, Nagare—_she's_ trying to take my boy from me! I know it's her. This is my punishment, Nagare. She'll do anything to hurt me. For what I've done . . . I'm telling you, she's trying to take him from me!_

I don't know what mysterious "she" she was talking about. If any of the maids took pity on me, they didn't have enough to let me out of that prison, or contact the authorities. It would have done them no good anyway; the local police were in the pocket of Uncle Iwao, and he never showed any indication of lifting a finger to help me.

It wouldn't have mattered, anyway. All I wanted from mother was for her to love me like she once had, but no one could make her feel what she couldn't feel, and all I was left with from her visits was hate. There was nothing I could do, no words I could say to put it right. I had betrayed her, but I couldn't even help it. I couldn't change what I was. I couldn't turn off my disease. Whether I had been born this way or done something to deserve it—it didn't matter one way or another, because there was nothing I could do to change it.

I never did get to see the school house in Kamakura or my classmates ever again. Not even the uniform I'd worn that night everything changed. Though, by the end, I'm sure, I had lost so much weight from all the tests and procedures—and I'd barely been a normal weight to begin with—I'm sure it would have hung pathetically on me.

All the tests they had put me through, the pain I was in constantly from the latest treatment or the emotional toll it was wreaking on my parents, and therefore on me—I couldn't stand it anymore. Six long months I spent locked in that old cell, lost in my own mind, in agony. I knew I couldn't live like that. I began to plan my escape.

I don't think I really need to go into what happened next. It's fairly common knowledge by now:

The night I finally managed to do it, that night in the early spring, the night of the lunar eclipse—the night I was finally able to free myself, was the night I ran into Muraki at the most unfortunate of moments. Too afraid to do anything, too petrified by what I was seeing to even run, I witnessed him killing that woman.

Then I witnessed everything he did and felt as he raped and tortured me, and cursed me to a slow and agonizing death.

—

I should not have gone back. Everything that I had learned as a shinigami and everything that had been carved in to my bones by that sadist told me to stay away.

But that morning, I set it all aside and set out for the village where I was born. I boarded a little bus—a route so unfrequented, it only made two round-trips a day, and most of the seats were vacant—and I headed up into the interior with a handful of locals and diehard tourists, into the old woods bound for a village so small it didn't even have its name on the map.

Talk about a scene from an old movie. Somehow my memories of Kamakura had been more vivid than my memories of the town where I grew up, so I was surprised to see it did look like some set of Restoration Japan that had been preserved for tourists, or to show visiting school kids what country life had been like a hundred years ago. There were some modern buildings—or at least, buildings that would have been cutting-edge at the turn of the twentieth century—like the old train depot and police station, and a newer gas station/convenience store at the very edge of town. But the farther we went in, the sparser the restaurants and storefronts became, and the more traditional the architecture.

The bus let us off in the village center. I hardly recognized the place in the daylight, without all the streamers and paper lanterns. On festival nights, the square had been a dreamy swirl of scents and sounds and color to my childhood imagination. Those had been good times, back when father still talked to me and mother still hugged me and called me her little boy, and passersby gave me gifts of toys and candy as if I were someone special, someone important. Back when the thrill of watching fireworks and the terror of a demon play could all mix innocently together in my mind, without any sense of a looming threat—like I felt now as I returned to it.

I had forgotten those festival nights completely until that moment. Perhaps in my time as a shinigami, I'd simply never had the chance nor the need to recall them, even though I'd attended other festivals with Tsuzuki and the rest since then. Maybe the reason why I could never lose myself in the celebrations like some of our coworkers could was tied up in those memories. Even my earliest experience with festivals had been marred by the knowledge of dark things—knowing we could only celebrate because something bad had happened long ago, and had only ended through much sacrifice. We could only be happy now because we had made it through the darkness, if not unscathed, at least intact.

But what was that bad thing? What was the source of darkness, and what sacrifice had been made to end it? I thought that I might have a better sense of it all when I reached my old home.

My feet knew the way, so I let them take me. Made myself invisible so I wouldn't be recognized; but also because I had a feeling, if someone knew where I was going, they would try to stop me. And I didn't want to be stopped.

I left the cracked, paved streets of the heart of the village and started up a dirt road. Old houses passed on either side of me, some which must have supported generations of families, all in some way tied to the Kurosaki clan, through service or some other symbiotic kind of history. Knowing a shortcut, I took a turn into the tall, overgrown grass and scraggily bushes. Everything was yellow and brittle around me, half the trees losing their leaves and showing how lined and gnarled their ancient trunks truly were. I wondered if they remembered me, because I felt like I should remember them. Did they bear witness to my life and death? Were they here when the village was new—did they see the deed that the festival commemorated each year?

But they told me nothing. My powers don't work with trees—if they even have anything to say. But they did seem to point me on. I walked through fields gone to seed that I had played in as a young kid, playing games with other children from the village, imagining the katydids and lightning bugs were my friends.

Before father shut me up. Before I became to this town like something carrying plague. I remembered the village kids' jokes, and how easily they would make me cry. How cruel I thought they were, and yet I always went to play with them again. I didn't have anyone else.

Then I turned a corner along a narrow deer path, and I saw it. It was smaller than I'd imagined in my memory, and darker, if that was possible, like the whole thing had been carved out of burned logs and given a lead roof. I could see the gates, and trace out the path I would have taken when I arrived home from the old schoolhouse on the hill—which hallways I would have walked down, careful not to make the old floorboards squeak and give me away, which rooms I would have visited. Where I ate. Where I sat to watch the garden birds in the summer. It was all there, laid out before me like a model of my life in miniature.

I couldn't move. If I'd still had a real heart, it would have stopped in my chest. I couldn't believe I was finally here—that it was real, and I hadn't just imagined it this whole time, just a fantasy I'd created to make me think I was alive at one point when I'd really been dead all along.

But I hadn't made it up.

I _had_ been born here. I grew up here. I died here. And now that I was here once again, I didn't know what to do.

The place did, though. It called to me. It pulled at me, like a wave drawing me further out, undulating in serpentine fashion. Bewitching me and beckoning me inward, toward the old house and the grounds with the lake and the cherry trees, congratulating me that I had finally made it, saying _here_ was where I'd finally find my answers . . .

_Not yet_, a voice said within me before I could give in. _You can't go in there till you have the proper ammunition._

And I almost laughed that that voice of reason, telling me not to go, sounded in my head like Tsuzuki's voice.

I don't know why it should be anything to laugh at. It just makes sense. If there was anyone I had come to trust more than any other, anyone whose advice I was likely to listen to and take to heart, it was Tsuzuki's. There was something endearing about it, to think I had been around him for so long, and he had so much influence over me, that I should hear my own conscience speaking to me in his voice instead of any other.

So I heeded the advice, and took a step back.

Then another.

Each one became exponentially easier as I turned and quietly fled that place. Not forever. No, I knew I would eventually come back—it was what I had made this trip for in the first place—but now was not the right time. I wasn't yet ready to face everything that had happened to me, everything that had made me what I was.

At that point, I wasn't even sure what that was. I had very little knowledge with which to tackle that place. My history was filled with too many blanks for me. Like I would with any opponent I had to face, I needed to prepare. I had to know what I was up against.

—

So I headed for the local library. It was a small building, little bigger than your average izakaya and sturdy, built in the war era. But as tight-knit communities like ours generally are, it had full and detailed records about every family that had ever lived in the village—and none more so than its caretakers, the Kurosakis.

I couldn't be seen there either. Our village isn't a big one; people don't tend to leave once they're there, and new blood is rare. If there was even a remote chance someone might recognize me, I had to take proper precautions. So I made myself invisible to the living, and only returned after the library had been closed for the night to start the serious digging.

Alone with the village records, I was able to peruse at my leisure, but I was disappointed to find . . . well, that I didn't find much of any use to me.

My family tree was there, or what of it was made public record. Most of it, straight lines of descendancy; very few siblings; androgynous, single-character names. I knew better than to take it at face value. My own sister was left off the records. Or, perhaps, her death just hadn't been recorded, and therefore neither had my birth when I supplanted her. The only evidence I even had that she'd existed was the gravestone off in one corner of our property, half-buried in the weeds and the brambles. Father had taken me to see it once, pulling me along though the brambles scratched my arms, before finally confessing to me that the headstone that bore my name didn't belong to me, but to a stillborn, older sister I never knew.

Ever since then, I hated it. It wasn't a particularly feminine name, but it was nonetheless a girl's, and since that day I found out it wasn't my own and mine alone, I secretly resented being given it. Like the boy named Sue in the Johnny Cash song, sometimes—years later—I wished my father ill for saddling me with such an awful name, even if there were very few who actually teased me for it. It was the fact that it had belonged to my sister before me that only served to make me feel like a replacement. I was not the first-born I had grown up believing I was until that point, a blessing bestowed on our family and born out of love: I was just a re-do. As if I had been conceived and birthed in order to carry on the burden of my late sister's soul in addition to my own. As if she had found a way to escape and left me behind to be her scapegoat.

At my young age, I didn't know what it was she would want to escape, or how an unborn fetus could even think in such terms. But I knew even as a young boy, felt it in my bones, even if I couldn't say why, that to be born into the Kurosaki household was a kind of prison in and of itself.

The name turned out to be eerily appropriate for me, and to an uncanny extent to our family, as well. There was a secret in our household so well kept, even I didn't know the first thing about it. Except that it was there. As a child, I was often confused by the talk of the adults around me who spoke in hushed, anxious voices of heritage and family obligation, as if afraid God might overhear. But as I said, I kept my head down. I suppose the village I grew up in must have had some strange customs in the eyes of other people, but I came to understand that every region has its own local deities and festivals, and did not bother to think that our stories of an evil god slain by a wandering hero were anything particularly unique. We weren't even the only village to have that story.

As I stared at my name in the records, I thought about what it might mean, and wondered if my sister had been the secret referred to, the secret my parents had kept alive in me so well for thirteen years. I wondered how many of the others listed on that tree spoke of cases similar to mine. How many of those gender-less names referred to aunts and great-aunts that hadn't fared as well as the men in my family? I always knew we were ultra-traditional in many ways, but what was it about being a Kurosaki that was so toxic to the women in our family?

One way or another, though, I was the last name on the tree. I couldn't say whether I was relieved or sad for my parents to see they had had no other children after me. It hadn't been any fault of mine, but I couldn't help a twinge of filial guilt that the line might have died with me. Not even my uncle had any children to save it. I couldn't help feeling that if I hadn't gone out that night, if Muraki hadn't found me, there might still be hope for another generation of Kurosakis. But not anymore. . . .

I set the matter aside for the time being, and kept digging. I couldn't afford to dwell on the things I already knew when there was so much left to be discovered.

There were a few photographs. Our family, though we kept to ourselves, had been fixtures in the community for centuries, the glue that held the village together, and that status required occasional official appearances. Especially at the local festivals, whose plays always culminated in the story of our village's founding.

It was during those last chaotic years before the Tokugawa era. A samurai by the name of Kurosaki no Ren was passing through the village when he was warned of a snake god, a yato-no-kami, who had cursed the well. The villagers begged him to dispatch the god, which he did after a fierce confrontation, but not before the yato-no-kami cursed his descendants for the unpardonable sin of killing a god.

I had heard the story every year, but I never it much serious thought. Every small village that survived the Westernization of the modern era had some dark tale up its sleeve, some ghost story or another to bring in the tourists and protect just enough of the locals' quiet way of life. Gods were part of the old ways. We might still hold festivals in their honor, build temples for veneration, but no one actually _believed_ in them anymore.

At least, that's what I'd thought before becoming a shinigami. Being confronted by devils and demons has a way of changing one's opinions about those kinds of things. For that matter, so does being a shinigami.

But reading that story now, in the empty library in the middle of the night, no longer an ignorant child but a veteran of the supernatural, I felt something stir within me.

Something primal. Something cold. Like a slithering in dark, deep water.

A chill went up my spine, and I shut the book with a clap, as if that could banish the specter of . . . whatever it was that seemed to loom over me. In an instant, I was back among the dark wooden shelves full of musty records, pressing around me like the walls of a warm, safe cocoon.

But I had to resist the urge to run. I could have transported myself back to Enma-cho in an instant if I wanted to—all it would take was a thought—but I wouldn't.

I wouldn't give in to an irrational urge that came from I didn't even know where. For one, I was supposed to be on vacation. I had to keep up appearances. If I came running back from Kamakura, everyone would know where I went, and they would know why. There was only one possible reason someone like me would go back to some place like that.

More than that, though, I had no other reason for running but a nameless fear. Something about the old legend had spooked me like a gullible kid at his first school sleepover. And just like some lame story about dead students and haunted stairways, there was nothing in that old legend that could hurt me. The snake god had been destroyed long ago, if there ever was one to begin with. If there really was a curse on my family, it couldn't be any worse than what I already suffered when I was alive.

Besides, I still needed answers before I could go home again. I felt there was still something my father and uncle had been hiding, and whatever it was, I wasn't going to find the answer anywhere in the village records.

Back in my hotel room, I thought about it long and hard, and there was only one place I could think of to go.

—

"Yo, Bon!" I got when Watari answered his phone. "How're the leaves in Hakone?"

I knew he wouldn't like my answer, but it had to be said.

"I'm not in Hakone, Watari. I'm in Kamakura."

It only took a heartbeat for Watari to catch on. I could hear him sober when he said, "Right."

—

"Rule number one of being dead," he said: "You can never go home. What the blazes got into your head to make you think you were the exception to that rule?"

It wasn't often Watari got seriously upset over anything, and having him upset with me was a completely new and surprisingly unpleasant experience. Maybe because he always seemed so happy all the time. I was just glad he wasn't there in person and I didn't have to feel the full brunt of his disappointment by looking at him.

"It's a free country," I said. "They can't stop me from going where I want."

"No, but you still gotta take responsibility for your actions. The rules exist for a reason, Bon. You do understand why you were told expressly not to do this kinda thing, don't you?"

I did understand. I knew the rules, why they existed. I also knew that if I was careful, no one had to know the difference. The rule that forbade a shinigami to go home was there to protect the living—to protect the system that said when the dead died, they were gone. For all intents and purposes. They didn't come back to continue their afterlives alongside the living. They didn't whisper in anyone's ear what happened on the other side. Death remained a one-way street, for their benefit as much as ours.

But I never planned on being seen. I was careful. For that matter, I knew of one former traffic officer in Okinawa who disobeyed that rule on a daily basis. But none of this I told Watari.

"I'm sorry," I said, even though I wasn't really. Sorry he was disappointed in me, more like. "But I don't remember very much about my family. Since coming to Meifu, all I remember pertains to my death. For that matter, I don't think I ever knew very much at all where the Kurosaki clan was concerned."

I was too young to remember the histories I was taught—or at least too young to make sense of them when they were told to me. And by the time I was of an age to really get it, my folks wanted next to nothing to do with me.

"Look," Watari said. "I know how it feels, Bon. I really do. All I remember from my own life are bits and pieces—working in my lab, swimming in the pool—thinking it would work for me like it did for Archimedes, that I'd have my own big, eureka moment, but all I really got from it was this crazy hair. Sometimes I wonder if I really lived any of it at all, or if it was all just some crazy dream someone planted in my head, and I'd really been in Meifu all along. Like the Gushoushin."

I felt for him as he told me that. I knew the feeling. Every shinigami wakes up with it from time to time. Sometimes life here—or rather, our semblance of it—can feel more real than the lives we did live, even to the point where our histories seem like dreams to us, vivid yet just barely remembered.

However. . . .

"Maybe that's how it is for you, Watari, but this is different. I have a family that's still living. I remember that much. Or, at least, I _had_ one. . . ."

"How much do you know about them?"

He was asking so he might know how much he didn't need to fill me in on; but I got the impression he was also asking to get some idea of how much he could safely leave out, without me catching on.

"Just what I've been able to learn from public records. My family tree, records on the property. Local legend, but you have to take that with a grain of salt.

"I had a sister. I remember that much. She had the same name as me—I mean, I was given her name when I was born, but she died before I ever had a chance to meet her. It's her birth that's in the official records, but they make no mention of her death. Just like they make no mention of me being born. It's like they just decided to consider us one person."

"Or they wanted to pretend she never existed."

Watari's tone caught my attention. It made him start as well, as though the words had slipped out of him of their own accord. He seemed surprised he'd said it. "I didn't mean that, Bon. I didn't mean to suggest anything about your folks. That is, I don't wanna presume to know what they were thinking—"

I could all but hear his blush, knowing he was only digging himself deeper into a hole, but for some reason it made me smile. "That's okay, Watari. I think I get what you're saying."

"You do?" His sigh of relief rattled in the phone's receiver. "Thank goodness you're a mindreader! Otherwise, I'd be putting my foot in my mouth. _Again._"

I didn't bother correcting him. My empathy never worked over the phone, but I guess in some ways, with all my experience getting behind-the-scenes looks into people's hearts, I'd learned a little something about reading voices and facial expressions as well.

And knowing how he'd react on the other end, I dreaded what I had to say next.

"I have a favor to ask."

"Sure, anything."

"I'm not sure it's as easy as you think. It's kind of a big favor. I'm not even really sure what I'm expecting to find, I usually don't do stuff like this—"

"Bon, you alright? Has something happened?"

"Are you alone right now?" I didn't want anyone to overhear even a little of what I had to say.

"Yeah. Why? You gonna tell me what this is about?"

I took a deep breath, and jumped right in.

"I need to know what you and Tatsumi uncovered in Kamakura. Concerning my family. I know that information is probably classified, and something tells me I probably don't want to know all the details. But I _have_ to, Watari. I have to know what went on in that house, what my parents never told me. Even if what you have to tell me is unpleasant, even if you don't think I can handle it . . . I can. Really. I have to know. I have to know what I am."

A waver nudged its way into my voice, making me swallow involuntarily when I said the last part. I didn't care. I'd said what I thought was necessary, all of it the truth. I was terrified of my family's secrets, but I didn't feel like I could keep living in the dark. That was even more terrifying to me, the thought that I might never know.

And wasn't that only natural?

For a long moment, there was only silence on the other end. I even feared he had hung up. But somehow, something I said must have gotten through to him. He didn't give me any spiel about the curiosity killing the cat or letting sleeping dogs lie. He didn't give me the big speech about how much trouble he could get in for giving me that information. Maybe he thought—correctly—that I had already been through all those arguments a hundred times over in my own head.

He just said, "I'll see what I can do. One way or another, I'll have an answer for you soon."

It felt like I'd been holding my breath forever when I let it out. "Thanks, Watari—"

"Oh, Bon, just one thing, okay? Don't tell Tatsumi we talked about this?"

I smiled, feeling sheepish. "Actually, I was going to ask you the same thing."


	8. Kurosaki File, Part B

He called me back the next day saying we should meet. It took me aback how quickly he responded, thinking it might be a couple days yet before I heard anything from him. But I should have known Watari well enough by then to know that when he set his mind to something, he didn't rest until he'd seen it through to the end.

Maybe I just hadn't thought he'd set his mind to something that had to do with me.

We made arrangements to meet at a cafe near where I was staying in Kamakura, and Watari arrived a few minutes late with a manila office mail envelope under his arm. Used to Tsuzuki-time as I was, I thought he was early until I checked my watch.

"There's some nasty stuff in there, Bon," he said. He had hands folded over the envelope in front of him, as if reluctant to push it my way. "I think you oughtta know that right off."

"You think I might change my mind?"

It wasn't a challenge on my part. Not that time. I wasn't having second thoughts, not exactly—I knew I wanted to do this—but I couldn't help being anxious about what I might discover. Once I actually had the files in my hands.

Watari considered that a second—it felt like he was considering our whole professional career together—then he said, with absolutely certainty, "No. I don't think you will. But I feel like someone should warn you, goin' in. You've seen a lot of dark shit with us, Bon. I'm not gonna sugar-coat it for you: This isn't gonna be easy."

"I understand." And I did appreciate his concern. I did. "But I'm ready for it. I have to see what's in that file, Watari. I've come this far. There's no going back for me now."

That's what he was afraid of, his resigned sigh seemed to say. But he didn't argue.

"It's my father, isn't it? He did something—"

"Your father?" Watari blinked. "No. Not per se. But—Bon, you _hafta_ know by now, your family's got secrets—"

"That go back to the founding of the line. Right? The yato-no-kami."

"You know the story 'bout them, don't ya? Old gods—as old as the Japanese islands themselves. Rose up outta the sea along with them, I suppose. Here long before any humans, in any case. And they were a nasty bunch, even as far as kami go. Vengeful. Poison in their veins. It was said one of 'em just had to look at ya and he could wipe out your entire family line.

"Then Man came, had himself some wars, and for a period there of about a hundred years, the yato-no-kami were systematically wiped out of the northeast to make way for farmland. A lot of the old, ancient gods were. The human population was exploding, the islands got civilized, and the kami went by the wayside, either destroyed or hidden underground. Your great-great-grandaddy's particular demon looks to've been one of the last holdouts."

"But how do you even destroy a god?"

"That's just the thing, isn't it? Sure, there's legends about magic swords and whatnot, but even those only go so far. Some say you can only destroy their vessel but not their nature, that some of the kami's power still lingers in the local surroundings, like microbes in the soil. All the more reason to even try to slay one is about the most dire sin a person can commit."

"And reason enough for his descendants to be cursed for all time."

I'd rarely seen Watari look as grave as he did then. As an empath, I was more used to feeling for others than to feeling their pity for me.

"D'you want me to stay with you while you look these over?" he asked me.

He pushed the folder to the center of the table, where it rested between us and the drinks we had barely touched. Now that the file was literally out of his hands, he seemed eager to get rid of what was inside, and let someone else deal with it.

His expression behind his glasses was a little harder to read. You would think someone as gregarious as Watari would wear his heart on his sleeve, but I always had a hard time reading his emotions. (I don't know if the glasses have anything to do with that, or just the clutter inside. From my experience, it seems Watari keeps his mind a lot like he keeps his office: He knows exactly where everything is, but to everyone else it just looks like a royal mess.) He smiled as he offered to stay with me, but the fragile, gentle smile on his lips didn't quite match the one in his eyes, and even then I had no idea if either of them was genuine.

"No," I said. I'd made up my mind before he arrived. "I need to face this by myself."

Honestly, the idea of going back to my hotel room to be alone with the file filled me with so much dread I could hardly keep my hand from shaking as I raised my cup to my lips. But I didn't want anyone else there when I read it. Maybe it's narcissistic of me, but on one level I was afraid of embarrassing myself. I never liked to be seen as vulnerable. That went triple after what happened with Muraki. Tsuzuki knew how to deal with me when I got like that, but I didn't trust nor wish that kind of trouble on anyone else. And Tsuzuki was the last person I wanted knowing what was in that file.

No, I'd made a decision when I called Watari for help that I needed to be strong. This matter concerned no one but myself. And just like no one could make me overcome my fears about Muraki but myself, no amount of onlookers was going to help me understand my family's history better than I could.

None of which made facing it any easier, of course.

Although, "If it's demons and gods and monsters . . . I've seen a lot worse than that in this job. I think I'll be able to handle it."

Watari looked like he wanted to say something to that regard, but he changed his mind. "Alright, Bon. But if you need someone to talk to about it when you're done, don't hesitate to gimme a call, okay? Remember, there's nothin' in there I haven't already seen. And you know you can count on my discretion on this matter, right?"

He fixed me with such an intense stare over the frames of his glasses that nothing I said felt like it would sufficiently get across how deeply I was in his debt. I had to settle for a simple, "Thank you, Watari. I . . . I really can't tell you how much I appreciate this."

"It's no big deal!" he said automatically, breaking into a grin. Then: "Well, actually it is a rather big deal. Whatever happens, you didn't get that file from me, capisce?"

I almost could have laughed. The whole thing suddenly felt like a bad spy movie.

The mood passed quickly, though. "I owe you one."

"Now, it's too early to start talkin' 'bout oweing me anything. You might not like what that file's got to say. You might hate me for caving in and letting you have it when I really should know better."

"Not at all. In this case, knowing is definitely better than not knowing." And I was going to tell myself that no matter what happened next, and no matter how long Watari stared at me like that.

He knew better than to argue with me, especially on a matter like this. I don't know anything about his own life—or death, for that matter—but I knew it was none of my business. He probably felt the same way about me. Unfortunately, though, knowledge is a tricky thing in that, once you have it, it's almost impossible to take back again.

"Just be careful, Bon," he said, then flashed another smile. "Don't do nothin' I wouldn't do."

—

For all that I had been eager to get my hands on my own family's file, when I got back to my room with it, I couldn't seem to make myself open it. It sat on the coffee table where I put it down, and stared at me. If a manila envelope can ever be said to stare.

As easily as I had dismissed Watari's concerns in the cafe, now that I was alone with that information, I had no one to fall back on. No sounding board to bounce my brave words and denials off of.

I had no one to tell me it was OK, this was no big deal, I would get through this fine. No one but myself.

The fact that I even needed outside help getting information about my own family seemed ridiculous. But for some reason, it seems the longer I'm dead, the less I can remember of my life. Time works against you where memory is concerned, when all of a sudden you have all the time in the world. I don't know if it's the environment here in Meifu that edges those memories out with its gentle eternity, the unchangingness of our bodies, or something that Enma put in place when I got assigned this job, like a computer chip blocking the proper connections from being made in whatever survived of my mind.

Then again, maybe it was that night with Muraki that did it, cleaving what was me cleanly and brutally in two, preserving my younger self like an amoeba under the glass of a microscope slide, and changing the me that moved on from it so much that sometimes everything that came before it no longer seems . . . well, relevant to who I am. God knows the kind of trauma I've seen is more than enough for any one life.

But I wonder as a look back how I ever lived as I did, in the ignorance I did. I wonder how I ever got by day-to-day as a child without learning anything of my parents, if I just walked around with my head down and my hands over my ears so I never had to see or hear what was going on around me. It must have been intentional on the part of my younger self, like the imaginary friends I remember having invented to stave off my loneliness. The tactic worked so well they were more vivid to me than my actual childhood in that house, and that village, and I'm left with hardly any concrete memories of that time, aside from those few I've already mentioned. And even those are hazy, impressionistic, reduced to their basic feelings. Lights and sounds and colors.

Sometimes I wonder if my childhood would have been better had I never known my father, instead of watching him push me away over the years, and lock his heart to me. Unlike my mother, who only despised me after my secret slipped out, after I'd become a monster in her eyes, I don't think there was ever a time when father loved me. What did I do so wrong, what about me turned out so wrong that, even from the beginning, he could not care for me as a father should care for a son?

That question plagued me for a long time, even beyond the constraints of life and obligation, kept me up some nights when sleep was a worse alternative, and weighed me down with immeasurable guilt in the daytime.

Tsuzuki's guilt.

Tatsumi's, and the chief's. Hijiri's and Maria's, Tsubaki's and Chizuru's. Kurikara's. . . .

The guilt of every single person from every single case I've worked since becoming a shinigami. This "gift" of mine that is the bane of my existence—it's made me a sponge, gathering up pieces of every soul I encounter. Their pain echoes inside me, even if I can never quite know the reason for it. I feel that it's there, even if I don't know why, even if I don't know why _I_ was the one chosen to bear that burden, why _I_ was cursed with it.

As I reexamined my short life in that hotel room, I could find no sins of mine worthy of that kind of punishment. None that were in my power to control, that is, none that I was not already born with. I may not have been pious enough, but I was as devoted as I could be to what I was given in return. I may have hurt some people gravely when I revealed my empathic ability, but I never intended any harm. Nor was that even the beginning of my troubles. More like the proverbial straw on the camel's back.

And yet, I am guilty. Beneath the weight of all those other souls, there is something in me that cries out in shame. Something that resonates with all those others' pain. Something buried so deep within me, even I don't know what it is.

Have I been held accountable all this time for something I did early in my childhood, some terrible, unforgivable crime I have no recollection of? Or was it something that happened before I was born? Because how can a child be responsible for something it was not alive to do? _Why_ should a child be held responsible for that?

Those were questions I had no way of answering. But the envelope on the table possibly did.

I don't know how much time I wasted that afternoon pacing my hotel room, or just sitting in the corner of it, staring at that envelope. Finally, I pushed myself up and went to it. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, or jumping off a cliff, I couldn't think about it, about what was going to happen next. All I could do was will my body over the edge, and let my mind sit back and just enjoy freefall. After all, I had come too far to back out. Now that I had the missing piece to the puzzle that was my childhood, I couldn't _not_ read it.

I unwound the string—my hands shaking so bad I nearly tore it off—and opened the envelope. I gently removed the papers, even though they were just photocopies and printouts that Watari had made, and set them on the table. I sat myself down as I had a hundred times in front of my middle school math book, or my computer screen in the Summons Division office, when I wasn't sure how to start a report. And I prepared myself for a story about demonic infestation.

I didn't think any human story could be worse than that.

I was wrong.

—

The envelope contained both Watari's and Tatsumi's reports. According to the date stamp, they had been called to investigate my family while I'd been in Gensoukai that first time with Tsuzuki.

The initial problem was with my mother. She'd been ill for some time and it had finally raised enough red flags in our system for Summons to take action. The issue: a pregnancy that had already lasted two years and left her in a semi-vegetative state.

Not unlike the prison I'd spent the last few years of my life in, I thought: a prison of the body as well as the mind. I knew what special kind of hell that could be. But _I_ hadn't had another life growing inside me. I felt ill as I read the details. Of course, cases like hers weren't unheard of in medical history, and I'd read stories about women who had had pregnancies lasting decades. The fetuses were calcified. Like tumors that were neither alive nor dead, but just refused to go. But it was something a child should never have to imagine his own mother suffering. Guilt flared up inside me all over again, only this time I knew the reason.

I was their only living child. If I hadn't gone and gotten myself killed, they might not have tried to have another son. If I had still been there, none of that would have had to happen.

_I_ had brought that on my parents.

No, I corrected myself. _Muraki_ did it. It was because of _him_, and _his_ decisions—no fault of my own. But even that was cold comfort. The reason for mother's doomed pregnancy was directly tied to my own fate. I understood why Watari had been so hesitant for me to know. He knew I'd be horrified to learn what had happened in my absence—_because_ of my absence—and that I'd blame myself.

But there was more. The doctor who had been treating my parents had died mysteriously—hence my coworkers masquerading as her replacements in order to get close to the family—and the records she'd kept on them had disappeared.

_Treating my parents. Records on them._ Plural. I was confused. Father was undergoing treatment as well? But for what?

I scanned ahead. Something about a skin condition, his vision and stamina affected. Possibly genetic. . . .

Then something caught my eye.

Mother hadn't been catatonic the entire time Watari was there. According to his report, when she was lucid, she would see things that caused her to scream hysterically. Father passed them off as hallucinations, said her condition made her delusional, but Tatsumi didn't seem so sure. Something about father's explanation gave him cause for suspicion.

He said mother was convinced she was haunted by a ghost that was trying to kill her. The ghost of her dead sister.

—

Since as far back as I can remember, I've known about my sister.

It was one of my earliest memories. Being taken behind the house as a young boy to a gravestone that had my name on it. Something like that should scar a kid for life, but father had explained to me before I could even think about my own mortality that it was my older sister buried there, an older sister who had died before I was even born.

Stillborn, I learned later. It couldn't be helped. So my parents counted themselves blessed when I came along. A healthy, living boy. They gave me her name to honor her memory, to keep her close by even though they'd never really had a chance to know her.

I never really analyzed it when I was a child, but even from an early age I felt a close presence. Living in that old house, playing in that field, even when I was alone I never truly felt alone. It always seemed as though someone or something was watching me, itching to come over to me, always staying just out of reach. Not exactly benign, but not really sinister either. Just . . . curious. I'd had no way to explain it, so I let my imagination run wild.

I had a particularly vivid imagination, too. I couldn't always tell if my playmates were kids from the village or friends I had imagined to life. Maybe it was a combination of both. Sometimes they sang old songs that my friends later denied knowing, when we were safe inside the old school house and under the protective eye of our teacher. Sometimes they seemed to know things about me that I never told them in class.

As a child, you never really give those kinds of things much thought. Your dreams are more vivid, and, as you age, what was real to you then starts to seem like a dream.

But now, reading what was written in that file, I started to wonder.

Wonder if that presence I had felt all my life had been a trace of my sister, a bit of her soul hanging around, watching me. Wonder if I didn't know, even if just a little, how mother felt.

Only, to my knowledge, I had never felt in mortal peril from my own shade.

—

Moreover, I never had an aunt. Other than Uncle Iwao's wife, that is, and as far as I knew, she was still alive. Divorced from my uncle almost as soon as the dinner party that autumn night in '93 was over—and no one would say it wasn't for the better—but even if something had happened to her since then, she'd never shown any indication in the time I'd known her of hating my parents enough to want to spend her afterlife haunting them.

So it came as a shock to read that my mother had had a twin. An identical twin at that.

I stared at the photo and couldn't believe it. It must have been a trick, I thought. Someone had taken mother's picture—snapped at a festival of some sort when she was younger—and simply mirrored it. Edited it. It couldn't be real.

If it was, then why had I never been told about my aunt, who the file said had been named Kasane? That was something a child should know, wasn't it? That his own mother had an identical twin?

The answer lay right in front of me, too shameful to have to read on paper. But, with no other option, I read on anyway.

She had committed suicide. Drowned herself in the lake behind our house—the lake everyone called Kasane Pond, and I'd always just assumed it was after the old ghost story. The same lake my mother would always tell me not to go near, for one reason or another. It varied by the hour. Because it was dangerous and I didn't know how to swim. Because snakes lived in that pond, and mosquitoes. Because it was haunted.

But never because her own sister, her sibling so close to her they shared the same face, the same DNA, had killed herself in it. Not because her own kin had committed an act so shameful there, she could never bring herself to speak of it.

But it wasn't just my aunt Kasane who had shamed herself.

It was my father as well, for pretending as though she had never been his legal wife. It was my mother, for marrying father before her sister was even cold in her grave. Both of them, for carrying on as though she had never existed.

And as though she had never given father a child.

Because the story he told me at that gravesite had been only half complete, if that. I really did have an older sister, but she had been my half-sister, the daughter of an aunt who died before I was born. Another woman, who could have been _my_ mother, if things had worked out differently.

And her child hadn't been stillborn, either. That was one area where the official history and Tatsumi's report varied wildly. My sister Hisoka hadn't just taken her first breath outside the womb, she'd lived for days. Weeks, even. A healthy baby girl, with no defects to speak of.

That had been her only sin. If Tatsumi's story could be believed—and I had to believe it, even if I found it abominable to do so; what other option did I have?—it was Uncle Iwao who had killed her.

He had no choice, he'd said. It was for the family. For the good of the clan. If father was too weak of character, if he lacked the resolve to do it himself, then he, Iwao, would. As the oldest son. The son who should have been my grandfather's heir. So he waited until an evening when her parents had gone into town and left my sister with the maids, and . . .

He murdered her. A helpless, sinless baby, and he snuffed the life from her. Just like that.

It was no wonder Aunt Kasane took her own life after that. It was from grief, plain and simple. A mother's grief. Grief that was only compounded by father's unwillingness to bring my uncle to justice for his crime. For that matter, maybe he'd been complicit in it. As far as the local police were concerned, my father never put a foot wrong. And maybe that was just uncle's bribes doing the talking, but I had no way of knowing it wasn't. I always knew my family was traditionalist. Patriarchal, sometimes to the extreme. The first-born child inherited the household and all its long history, all its obligations. Uncle Iwao never let any of us forget that, never let us forget the slight of grandfather's decision when he'd deviated from that tradition for perhaps the first time since its founding.

But more importantly, only a son could be heir.

They had done it together. They must have. I was sure of it. Father wasted no time trying for another child after my sister was out of the way. A proper child, a son who, with no living child before him, could pass as first-born, without even changing the records. Surely that was proof enough of his guilt. And when Kasane wouldn't do it for him, when she chose death over giving him another child, he married her sister. Her exact duplicate, in all but scruples. He did his part that night, getting his wife out of the house so his brother could come in and do the dirty work. And my uncle . . .

I'd always known. I'd felt it, even at a young age, what a monster he was. The way he looked at me, kept his distance from me. . . . I'd felt it at that dinner party. His conscience had confessed it to me, albeit in no specific detail.

He was a killer. I'd known that much with certainty. He was a killer who had felt no remorse for his crime. No joy, either, but a satisfaction just the same, knowing he had done something righteous. Something justified. He had committed the ultimate act of filial piety, and, no matter what else, he was proud of that fact.

God. . . . It must have been _him_ who urged mother to kill me when I was thirteen!

He must have understood the nature of my ability. He must have figured it out that night, figured it was just a matter of time before I started spilling his secrets as well. My curse was a sword hanging over his head, so long as he knew there was a chance I could tell mother what he had done to her sister's daughter. And consequently to her sister.

Maybe he'd been planning a way of getting rid of me all along, all thirteen years of my existence. After all, I was the main obstacle between him and his inheritance. Maybe I only escaped my prison that night because he _wanted_ me to escape. He was a very influential man in our community. Maybe _he_ had sent Muraki—

No.

I stopped myself. That was a train of thought that could lead to some _very_ dark places, if I let it. But as it stood, I had no proof that my uncle had anything to do with Muraki being on the grounds that night. If he had, I should have at least felt something to that regard from Muraki himself. He hadn't exactly held anything back the night I met him. For all I still knew, our meeting was random. Pure chance, and extreme misfortune on my end.

Until something told me otherwise, I had to go on believing that. Otherwise, who knew where the path of speculation might lead. I had come to Kamakura to find answers, and so far they had only given me proof of more deceptions than I could have dreamed of.

But the answers were what would save me. That was what I believed when I made the leap and contacted Watari.

And that was what I believed as I held his and Tatsumi's report in my hand. So far, it hadn't been easy. I'd never thought it would be. But somewhere there would be an end to this tunnel, even if it got a lot darker inside before I could get there.

—

Darkness was something I was used to. I wandered in it my whole life, and so far my death has been no exception. In fact, it's made my first sixteen years look like a walk in the park.

I've faced monsters of one form or another that could have killed me. Some of them even succeeded. I've died more times than I care to remember—and not only at Muraki's hand, though that night, and the three-year-long ordeal that followed it, was certainly the worst. After that, dying can only get easier. After that, being nearly cut in half by your own devil-possessed partner—while no less excruciating physically—has to be put in perspective.

My shinigami body can mend just about any injury done to it, however fatal it may be, save for that caused by a god, like one of Tsuzuki's Twelve. But even that—or so I've come to understand—would be a relatively blissful way to slip into eternal sleep, compared to what that man put me through.

I was barely even dead and my first case involved my own murderer. A trial by fire if ever there was one. For just a short while, I was able to exist in ignorance of what precisely had happened to me, and in my ignorance I thought that the most important thing in the world was finding out what that was, and what or who was responsible for my death. I wasn't content with the "mysterious terminal illness" story. I knew somehow that it wasn't right. I needed something concrete to hold on to, something tangible to blame, and I thought the not-knowing was a sort of hell in and of itself.

But then Muraki made me remember . . . everything. Every excruciating detail of what he did to me. Every touch, every movement. . . .

Every minute etching of the curse he wrote into me.

What I wanted to forget most of all was what he was feeling all the while. The pain I can deal with—I can cling on to it as the reason I want revenge, the bastard who inflicted it the very example of the kind of person I never want to become. A standard of measurement for every future injury, so I can say: Well, I have felt worse.

But nothing drags me so low as the memory of what was going through his mind when he raped me in that grove, on my own family's property:

It was my fault.

I brought it on myself, being there that night. I had witnessed him murdering a woman, and he had to make sure I stayed silent on the matter.

Just my being there was temptation enough. And I didn't run away at first, like any normal person would have done. I didn't scream. I looked at him with an expression that . . . in retrospect, must have been shock and horror, but to his mind at the time, his mind already clouded by the thrill of bloodshed, he believed I looked like I was asking for it. Can you believe that? That anyone would actually _ask_ to be violated like I was? It was the same line he always used, whether it was in his thoughts that first night, or later, when I met him again after my death, a humiliation to constantly rub my nose in at every turn:

_I_ had seduced _him_.

Me. A thirteen-year-old boy whose only desire that night had been to sneak out of his prison for a few hours of fresh air. What could I possibly know of seduction? What could I possibly want from a man—no, a _monster_ like him? It was ludicrous to even entertain the idea.

And yet he believed it. He believed it so strongly, I had no choice but to feel it in my bones. My curse of empathy left me no other option. The strength of conviction behind his words, the fondness of the memories of that night in his own mind, the _beauty_ of it, seeped into me like blood into tree roots, making what hazy, nightmarish impressions remained blossom into grotesquely vivid colors and shapes, scents and sensations. The pain of that night was etched deep inside me, in every possible way.

And yet there was this overlay, this second layer of truth that I couldn't deny, I couldn't get out of my head: the sensuality of it all for him, the poetic imagery, the wonderful tragedy of it every time I tried to scream out my agony but couldn't find the breath. Every time I struggled underneath him, shuddered for him, bled for him. . . .

He enjoyed every second of my prolonged death, relished it like it was a gift I'd given to him. Like it was something, somewhere deep down inside me, I wanted as much as he did. Even through the fog of pain, I was not entirely immune to pleasure. And he wanted to make sure I knew, I'd enjoyed at least some of the things he did to me. I'd enjoyed them very much. . . .

Now I'm not sure if he only said those things to torment me. When I met him again, it was hatred I felt, his as well as mine. I'm not sure he ever expected me to come back to haunt him from beyond the grave. Well, I suppose I've done more thwarting than haunting; I've interfered with his plans at every turn, and that's the problem.

So he devised the best way he could of hurting me. I'm sure that's what it was. Not only did he awaken those memories that my becoming a shinigami had locked safely away, he gave me a reason to despise myself for them. A reason to doubt the kind of person that I was, and everything I thought I wanted.

There was one thing I wanted, though, that I did not doubt, and that was justice.

No. If I'm honest, what I wanted—what I still want—is revenge. There could be no justice for what happened to me that night, what he did to me. There's no going back in time, no undoing what was done.

But I can still make him pay. I can make him suffer.

If he isn't already dead, that is. And if he was, I know I would feel it. Like a snapped tension line, I would feel the slackness, the relief of not being tied to him anymore. Of not being pulled by him, by the curses that still crisscross my body. But the line has only been relaxed a little bit; I can't fool myself that it's gone altogether. So long as my curse remains, there will still be that connection between us, the connection made that night under the lunar eclipse, repeating like a looped track every time the lines under my skin start to itch again.

So long as he exists, I still have a chance. I can still see him suffer. I can still give him back everything he gave to me in spades.

And if it makes me as bad as he is . . . I doubt that's possible, but so be it. That's a small price to pay.

Because when I'm done, I'll finally be free.

—

Now, as I sat in my hotel room in Kamakura with my family's secrets laid out before me, I had to wonder if that violent urge screaming within me really did come from what Muraki did, some transference from his psyche to mine, or if it was something that existed as a potential in my DNA all along. If my own father and his brother had had it in them to kill—and destroy something harmless and defenseless, at that—why should I be any different?

In a way, I don't have a choice. Taking life goes hand-in-hand with this job, though that isn't to say it's ever easy. Not when you're an empath. Still, I was able to treat this job as just that from the start: a job. Nothing personal. So long as it simply meant taking souls. Peacefully ending lives myself that should have ended in more natural ways.

Until Tsubaki.

It was a long time before I no longer felt the gun in my hand—the kick and the heat of it after it fired. Even long after I'd washed my hands clean a dozen times, I still felt her blood on them.

She asked me to do it, I told myself. She would have died anyway. She knew that and she didn't want to suffer any more than she had to. She'd already suffered enough—and at the hands of Muraki, no less. In that way, we were like brother and sister, she and I, freaks born of the same evil mind. She'd just been shot by someone she trusted who had betrayed her; what was one more, if he could end it once and for all?

I should never have agreed. As a shinigami, I had other options in my arsenal. But none of them came to mind in that ship's hold, with her staring at me with those childlike eyes, begging me, through lips that had kissed mine, to pull the trigger. I wonder sometimes if she was begging just as much for herself, trying with everything she had left to convince herself that that was for the best, because I'm not sure even she believed it was. I'm not sure either of us truly believed that was mercy.

And I wonder sometimes if she really understood she'd be making a killer out of me, no different from him, even if my reasons were. Murder is murder, even if only with the best intentions.

Tsuzuki knew that. It flitted through the back of his mind even as he comforted me, told me everything would be alright, just let it out, that he knew what I was going through. Way back in the corner of his thoughts there must have been a doubt, a sense that there must have been something else I could have done. It didn't have to end that way. I didn't have to bloody my hands. I should have done my job better.

I wondered if that's how father felt when his first-born child was murdered. Did he justify it, saying it was for the best for everyone? Was he relieved that my uncle had done the deed for him, so he hadn't had to sully his own hands with the sin of infanticide?

It didn't matter. She was just a baby, only weeks old. What kind of monster destroys a life that innocent—his own flesh and blood? Because I couldn't find any justification for it. None whatsoever. Family obligation, tradition—those concepts were like ashes in my mind, all burnt up and useless to me. As dead as I was. Where had that obligation been to my sister? Where had it been to me? Neither of us ever asked to be born, let alone treated the way we were, in that house.

After what happened to us, should I still feel bad that they got the punishment any outsider would surely say they deserved?

—

If even half of that Tatsumi and Watari had reported was true—and I had no reason to doubt it was—was it any wonder Mother feared our household was damned? If not by her own sister, then maybe by her niece.

Or maybe something more sinister altogether.

As I read further, the reports grew less and less believable. If I weren't a shinigami, and if I didn't know the two who had written them, I might have passed them off as the paranoid rantings of a superstitious villager.

There was Tatsumi's story that Aunt Kasane's preserved body had attacked him while he was walking around the lake. Just up and reached out, dragged him under. . . .

The thing poisoning mother's womb, which wasn't any normal fetus. . . .

And father's mysterious "skin condition," though Watari's report hardly suggested anything that could ordinarily be called that. Scales, it read, that made him think of ichthyosis or leprosy, but were at the same time not quite like any form of either of those. Nights father would spend in agony while the household was under strict orders not to disturb him. Weakness, and extreme sensitivity to light. My coworkers managed to convince father to let them examine his eyes, and they were like cat eyes, they said, or possibly more like a serpent's.

Snakes. Suggestions of them were everywhere, from what Tatsumi wasn't even wholly sure he witnessed at the lake, to the description of father's eyes and scales found in the house, even maids' hearsay of sounds and shapes that slithered in the night.

Maybe suggestions were all they were. Everyone in the village knew the story of the curse behind my family. That's why they held the festival every year, to give thanks for our ancestor who had saved the population from the snake god.

And to appease whatever spirit they still believed haunted the area. They claimed to love every Kurosaki, to be indebted to us—and that was how we were allowed, quite literally, to get away with murder. But behind our backs, they blamed us. They begged the gods for their own mercy, washed their hands of the great crime. And so our entire line was forever paying the debt of our first ancestor in Kamakura, who committed the ultimate sin, no matter how pure or altruistic his motives might have been at the time: the sin of killing a god.

Maybe some of the older folks in the village still believed, but I'm willing to bet most of those who still stayed didn't put much stock in that curse business. They played their part for the tourists, and went through the motions on festival day as though they believed it; but if a real demon were ever to confront them, it would shock them as much as if they'd seen an alien from another planet. Shatter their entire worldview, throw their entire system of belief out the proverbial window.

I had been like that once. If not for my empathy, I might have only grown stronger in my disbelief as I got older.

I felt like that middle-schooler again as I read the reports, knowing I must accept every word of it, yet finding it hard to. The curse was real, and it was not something that had happened to someone else, something I could treat with the indifference of a story aired on late-night TV. It was something that had come true for my family. Something I had unknowingly lived my entire life in that household with.

Something that might have happened to me, something I might have had to suffer, if I were still alive today.

If I had been father's heir, instead of taken away that night of the eclipse—everything he had sacrificed for, sinned for, so that our name and our debt could be passed on for another generation.

If not for that night, for my successfully sneaking out—if not for chancing to go the way I did, randomly running into Muraki—

—

I shoved the table away from me as I bolted to my feet. Some of the files slipped off the edge and fell on the floor, intermixing out of order.

I didn't care. All of a sudden, it felt as though gravity had reversed itself in my gut and I was going to be sick.

Thankfully, as soon as I stood and sucked in a breath, the feeling passed; but a chill passed through me, and the air inside my room suddenly felt oppressive and damp. I thought I might suffocate. The truth was trapped in here with me, ricochetting around the walls, around the inside of my head, so that not another thought could get in.

The possibility that maybe . . . I was better off dead.

And that the one I had to thank for that was—

No. I couldn't say it, couldn't even _think_ it. To do that repulsed me, disgusted me, made all my anger and hatred for him flare up like a bomb armed and rearing to go off, and if I just let the button be pushed—

I wouldn't think it. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He _murdered me_. It's because of him that I carry around a curse of my own already, one that tortures me anew every time I'm reminded of him. One that I can never rid myself of. One I never asked for, nor did anything to even deserve, no matter what he wants me to believe. I never asked for anything like this. . . .

And yet, a quiet voice spoke up within me, not unlike the one that stopped me in the woods outside my house—and yet, aren't you happy where you are now? Aren't you grateful?

Do you really want to go back? To _that?_

But I couldn't—

I flung open the window, wishing these ridiculous thoughts would fly out, but the chilly autumn wind only rushed in. It made me shiver, though whether from cold or the excess of adrenaline, I couldn't be sure. It gave me something else to focus on for a few clear seconds, at least, and maybe that was just what I needed. A mental break.

There was an electric kettle in the room for making tea, and I plugged it in.

I picked up the papers that had fallen and pieced them back together with the others, placing each one in its correct order for when I was ready to delve into them again.

I took deep breaths as I paced the room, reviewing the story as I'd learned it so far in my head. Compartmentalizing each fact helped to distance me from it, if only for a little while. When the water was ready, I made tea, but I didn't remember to drink it. It was already dark outside, and I still had the story's conclusion to get to.

So I settled myself back down at the coffee table, cleared my thoughts, and plunged back in.

—

My uncle was dead.

By a freak and gruesome accident, according to Watari's report, but it left no room for doubt that the same mysterious curse that plagued my parents was responsible.

They hadn't been able to save my mother, either.

When they first arrived at the compound, Watari had taken on the role of the new physician, Tatsumi playing his assistant; but with no real medical training to speak of between them—other than what Watari picked up in his free time, which was only really of any use to shinigami bodies—they were ill prepared to deal with a real emergency.

Believing some essence of the original yato-no-kami had survived on the grounds and was responsible for the current mess, and its escalation, they performed an exorcism. (There was something else about wormholes, but the language was so technical—frankly, with everything else on my plate, I didn't read that far into it.) As far as the reports indicated, it was successful, but partway through, mother went into labor. In the end, it wasn't Aunt Kasane who killed her, as she'd feared, but the child inside her. Or . . . whatever you want to call it.

Tatsumi was gentle. He called it a child, and reported that it was born dead and then disposed of.

But Watari's more clinical vocabulary—fetus, tumor, keratinous blob—made me feel ill all over again. It was unreal. That was my own mother they spoke of. And even if she hadn't been much of one to me in the last years of my life, she'd given me my life all the same. I'd loved her once, as I'd thought she loved me.

I felt no spite toward my coworkers for being unable to save her—they are shinigami, after all, and death is their forte, not life—only a vague and distant sense of remorse. Maybe you could call it guilt. That I wasn't there. That I was off having an adventure with Tsuzuki, trying selfishlessly to make myself more powerful, while she was suffering through that living nightmare. I missed her death completely. I didn't even know it had happened, and that she had been gone for more than a year already.

As for father, his condition had progressed to a point it was necessary to remove him from that house, and whatever influence they believed it had over him. Last they'd left him, he was in a hospital in Kamakura. Possibly the same one I'd been admitted to after Muraki was through with me, during the three years before I died I still have no recollection of, other than the faintest impression of very intense pain.

I might have passed the building on my wandering just days before. But I doubted it. Hospitals are the kinds of places I keep a wide berth of, even when I have no personal connection to them. I had no desire to revisit the one that to me represented the worst years of my life.

For that matter, I had no particular desire to see what had become of my father, either. I didn't want to see what the disease I might have inherited looked like, and I didn't want his weight added to the one I already carried around on my shoulders.

He had lost everything. I knew the feeling all too well. Why did I need to relive it in someone else? In order to relieve my own conscience?

I didn't see what being there would relieve, or that there was anything I should apologize for if I went. Other than being dead, I suppose. For robbing him of the heir he and uncle obviously worked so hard to make possible. I sure as hell wasn't going to apologize for how I turned out. My empathy might have gotten me into the trouble that finally did me in, but it was beyond the point of mattering now. Just one more tick in a long list of mistakes and embarrassments our family had to suffer, that no amount of penance could undo or make right.

And now it was over. Father had failed. When he died, whenever that may be, our line would die with him.

All of the anger I had felt toward my family as I read through the reports sputtered then, confused as to where to go. I wanted to hate my parents for how they treated me, and for what they and my uncle did to my sister, even though I might never have lived if they hadn't. I wanted to believe that they all got what they deserved for their crimes in the end, just as we'd all had to pay for one distant ancestor's, but what did it matter one way or another? They were all gone now.

Only the house remained.

Empty, abandoned, all the servants sent home. Not a Kurosaki left to haunt that place, except for the souls of the dead.

And myself among them.

I had to go back. I had no choice. Now that there was nothing to keep me from returning, no one to be afraid of running into, I knew I would be going. It was just a simple matter of working up the will power.

—

The space of a few day's time had done little to change the appearance of the place.

And yet it was transformed in my eyes. Swollen out of proportion, darker in the shadows, more ancient than I ever grasped as a child wandering those halls.

I stood on the same rise before the same patch of fallow field, wondering if I now had what was necessary to go in. I was supposedly here on vacation, and had brought none of the tools I use as a shinigami. I felt naked, stripped of my powers. All but the ones I took in with me, that were a part of my soul now.

And knowledge. Maybe the most powerful weapon of all. The Tsuzuki-voice of my conscience told me that—or maybe I was just repeating it to myself like a mantra, thinking if I thought it enough times I might actually make it true.

But I could hear Watari on the other hand protesting, saying the whole reason he gave me that file was so I wouldn't have to go in myself. Rule Number One of being dead, he'd said to me, and it echoed in the chief's voice as well with every step I took.

And in Enma's. A voice I'd only heard once before, and then promptly forgotten. But my imagination was bad enough. What he wouldn't do to me if he found out what I'd uncovered about my family's past, and about my own—all the things he'd put the proper barriers in place to make sure I wouldn't remember. Did he think I would never go looking for the answers myself?

Or was it only a matter of time—was this too part of whatever plan he had made for me from the beginning?

The idea that there was something here he didn't want me to find out only made me more curious. It was just the push I needed to leave my hiding place, and walk out toward the house where I grew up.

—

It was like a strong sense of deja vu. Only in reverse. Places I knew I recognized, but it seemed as though they had all been important to somebody else. Not me.

The cracks in the wall, the patterns they made under my fingers like the valleys of Mars when I traced over them—a pattern I thought I must have once known so well, now felt so alien to me.

The trees and bushes in the garden, their familiar shapes overgrown and uncared for. The koi pond clogged with autumn leaves, nothing living in it now but frogs, the verandas that were swept clean every morning and afternoon black with mildew. Crickets chirping under the porch. A startled robin taking flight. Those were the only signs of habitation.

I don't know why I expected anything else. I knew the place had been abandoned after my coworkers' stay. But somehow I'd thought there would at least be servants here to hide from. The compound had always been alive and in motion when I was here. Even on the darkest days, there was a sense of life within its walls. Even as creaky and musty as it had been back then, it was well cared for, for a house of its age.

Now there was nothing. Once again, I felt I had been robbed of a right that was mine. I came here for answers, and for closure, and in the end my parents had denied me even that.

I wandered around to the back of the property. There were still two more places I had to see before I left.

But unlike the house and the cherry grove, the lake was unfamiliar territory. As a child, I had been forbidden to go there. Now I knew it was because my aunt Kasane had chosen that lake to be her tomb.

And if Tatsumi's story was true, its waters used to possess an even more sinister secret. It was the kind of place monsters rose out of.

And there I was, like a fool, heading in.

_—_

_"Ka-go-me . . . Ka-go-me. . . ."_

I stopped in my tracks.

I knew that old song. I dreamed of it sometimes, of playing the game with the village children whose mothers weren't afraid of rumors of a curse.

Or were they just the friends I made up to keep me company because the other children hated me? I couldn't remember now. If I could, I don't know how I would be able to separate the facts of that time from fiction. But I remember I liked to play that game more than any other, even though it filled me with terror to be the bird in the cage, the "goblin," wondering who was going to sneak up behind me to try and do me in.

To a child, it's wonderful to be afraid. You really do believe nothing can hurt you, and fear is only good for a temporary thrill you can return safely from whenever you want.

It's only as you age, as you see things you never want to see, and understand things you wish you never had to understand, that you begin to get a sense of your own mortality, and the true fragility of it. And wonder how you ever survived as long as you did.

_"Kagome, Kagome, little bird inside the cage . . . _

_"When, o, when will you come out? In the evening of the dawn._

_"The turtle and the crane both slipped and fell. . . ."_

I'd thought I was imagining the song, but as I crept up to the shore of the lake, I couldn't mistake the sound any longer. It was coming from the landscape around me.

My heart beat harder. I wasn't alone after all. Someone was here with me, singing . . .

_"Who's that sneaking up behind_ you _now?"_

It was a child, facing me over a narrow part of the lake. Barely taller than the reeds, no older than six or seven, and dressed in an old kimono. Its fair hair and complexion were like mine. Like my father's. It smiled when it saw me, though its messy hair obscured its eyes. I couldn't tell if the child was a boy or a girl, but then, they'd said the same of me when I was that age.

"Who are you?" I asked it, half expecting it would disappear when I spoke, prove itself to be just an illusion.

But the child remained. "Who are _you_?" it echoed back in its androgynous voice.

"I'm . . ." Kurosaki Hisoka, I almost said. I used to live here. "No one. A tourist."

The child laughed. "No, you're not."

"I got lost."

"No. You didn't."

How would you know, I wanted to say, but I no longer had any claim to this place. And who was I to tell off a kid for disrespecting his elder? Any other child in the village would have seen me as just another spoiled teenager from the city, and not a very impressive one at that. I wasn't the sort of person to be intimidated by.

"Why were you singing that song?" I said instead.

"What's wrong with it?" The child pouted—an expression I found even more disconcerting than its smile. "You always used to like playing 'Kagome, Kagome' with me."

Then I recognized the kimono the child was wearing. "That's my—"

"What, this old hand-me-down? Does that mean you know who I am? Of course, why wouldn't you recognize your own sibling?"

Hope surged within me. Could it be her? I wanted to believe that. After everything I'd read about my older sister just the night before, I would have liked to believe I'd been given a second chance to talk to her, to set things right where our parents could not.

I wanted to think that she was still here, that she'd always been here, watching over me.

But I knew better.

"My sister was only weeks old when she died. You can't be her."

When the child's smile dropped, the temperature around the lake seemed to fall with it.

"Yes," it agreed, "yes, I suppose you're right. I can't fool you, can I? However, I never said I was she."

The change that came over its voice chilled me. It was the voice of a young boy on the surface, but underneath was an agelessness that was out of place with that child's innocent face and body.

It raised its head, and now I could see that its eyes were a deep, golden green, like a stagnant, slime-filled pool. The whites of them had turned a putrid gray, but the irises shone enough with their own internal light that I could see the pupils were not round at all, but narrow slits. Like a cat's.

Or a serpent's.

I knew then who—or should I say, _what_ the child was just as surely as if it had told me itself. "You're that thing. . . . You're what killed mother!"

When it saw my disgust, it laughed. "I knew you'd see the family resemblance. But, after all, it is our _father_ we take after. Is it not?"

"But . . . that can't be." It wasn't that long ago that mother died—impossible that the child could be this big in just a few years, never mind the fact that, "You should be dead." This was at odds with everything I had read in Watari's report. He and Tatsumi had witnessed this thing's birth. "They buried you." I knew they would have no reason to lie about something like that. "So how . . .?"

The child didn't need to respond. At least, not out loud. I caught a glimpse of an infant-like shape, curled up tight from the pain of its final throes. Hard, black, scaly skin, cracked and weeping from the seams. A face that had all the right parts, but in all the wrong proportions. An alien thing struggling to live inside a body incompatible with the world it had been born into.

Whatever it looked like now, this child had not been an ordinary fetus. Even though mother's type of condition was well documented elsewhere, there had been nothing "normal" about her particular case. Or about what she delivered. "You're not human."

My coworkers hadn't lied. They _had_ disposed of the fetus afterwards. They just hadn't been expecting it to be what it really was.

"Yato-no-kami."

How could they miss this?

—

The satisfaction in the child's grin was all the answer I needed.

"Your friends were thorough, I'll give them that. But they weren't thorough enough. They were too busy going through their sacred rites, trying to banish me in one form, they did not see the me that was hiding in plain sight, right under their noses. And who could blame them? I wasn't exactly a beautiful baby."

A snarl tugged at my lips. "How could you do that to them? To _her_?" I wasn't sure which was more righteous, my anger for what that thing did to my parents—though I was finding it hard to love them, they were still the ones who'd given me life—or my disgust. I couldn't believe my mother would have simply allowed herself to be impregnated by a god, no matter how devoted she claimed to be to the family. Were my parents even aware of what had happened?

Or was that, too, something they just had to lie back and accept?

"If they would not do their duty and give me what I required," the yato-no-kami said, "I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands. Your parents would not give me an heir, so I made one myself."

"Then, you're not father's child at all." It looked like me, but that was only a trick of the yato-no-kami's powers. It had to be. I couldn't be related to that thing. "You're not my sibling. You're not any relation of mine!"

The child laughed—a haunting chuckle that hung over the water between us like a thick mist.

"You're mistaken. When I said we took after our father, I wasn't talking about that man, Na-ga-re."

It spoke my father's name like each syllable was a drop of water falling from its hand into the lake.

Or, rather, like it was the name of a lover. There was a fondness there, a kind of derisive lasciviousness, the same inflection I caught in Muraki's words when he talked about us "enjoying" our night together. It turned my stomach. What exactly had happened in that house after I was gone, I could not know except what my coworkers' official reports told me. But there were places even my need to know did not want to go.

"I had plans for you, Hisoka," the yato-no-kami said in that same lilting, serpentine tone. "Lofty plans. We were going to have _great_ fun together, you and I."

"All those centuries ago—how did you survive?" I had to know, because suddenly I knew what I had to do. Why my curiosity had led me here. "What is it you want from us?"

"Why do you want to know so badly now? You never seemed much interested in me when you were alive. What do you expect to accomplish with that knowledge, hm?"

I took a step backward. It was a natural response. All of a sudden, I felt I might not be the only one here with empathic abilities. It felt as though some cold hand was trying to reach into my soul; its fingertips were pressing at my flesh, trying to dig inside. Something was coming for me, slithering across the distance between us. I could almost see its shadow beneath the surface of the lake. . . .

"Poor shinigami." The child cocked its head. "You're a little out of your league. Here I was looking forward to our little family reunion, and this is how you greet me?"

My eyes darted around, but the banks were choked with weeds. Too many places to hide. Where would the attack come from?

"What do you want from me?"

The child tsked. "Nothing now. What use would I have for a corpse? All I want from you is to go back to the hell you came from!"

There it was! Moving toward me at remarkable speed. Tendrils like thick roots, slick with lake mud, flying through the weeds toward me.

My shields came up around me at a thought, a twitch of muscle, and the tendrils cracked and crumbled at the point of contact, leaving nothing but the smell of wet dirt.

But I missed one. Somehow it sneaked through my defenses. It cinched tight around my ankle and yanked me off my feet before I even knew what had happened. I hit the bank hard, breath and thought temporarily knocked out of me as a jolt of pain shot up from the base of my spine.

Other roots came up out of the water to join it, twisted and strong, and they dragged me. In a moment of panic, I could see myself under the lake's surface, floundering in that brackish darkness. I could feel it filling my lungs, feel myself drowning without dying, surrounded by some massive coiled serpent that waited for me there with the cursed soul of my aunt—

I think I screamed. I saw red and tasted ozone in the back of my throat.

Or maybe it was the child who screamed, singed from the blast from my psyche. I wasted no time hanging around to find out.

My leg free, I scrambled to my feet from the cold mud of the bank, a meter or less separating me from the edge of the water. And I ran.

I ran back toward the house as fast as my legs would carry me. All the while, the yato-no-kami's rage trailed after me. He hadn't expected much of a fight. But now that he'd seen what I could do, he'd have himself a little fun before finishing me off.

Just like how we used to play together.

—

I cursed my lack of foresight.

I had nothing on me—no fuda, no tactile weapons, not even a shikigami that I could call on. Nothing but my wits and my own mental shields. And my empathy, whatever good that was going to do me against a being more skilled at mind-reading than I was. I'd come here expecting the only fight to be in my own soul, and if I didn't come up with something fast, I would pay for that mistake.

Scratch that. There was one other option open to me. I could run. Teleport back to Meifu. Call this whole vacation nonsense off and confess to the chief just where I'd been, plead for Enma's mercy. For a moment, I even entertained it seriously. I was in over my head here; even begging forgiveness and accepting the punishment was better than being destroyed by the same being who had destroyed my entire family.

But I couldn't. I was sick of running. That's why I'd decided to come back in the first place. To reclaim my past, and face all the darkness and pain that went with it. I couldn't run away, even if I wanted to.

But more than that, I couldn't let the yato-no-kami have its way. I had escaped its clutches, and my own destiny, once. I wasn't about to let it take me back. I had to finish it now, or it would haunt me for the rest of my existence.

I ran to where I knew my father kept the family swords. Ren's original blade, the one from the legend used to slay the yato-no-kami, had been destroyed in the battle; but our clan was an old one, and there were others passed down over the generations.

I had gone looking for those swords as a young boy. But when father caught me at it, he had them all locked up. They were too dangerous for a child to handle—or, for that matter, anyone. He abhorred any tool used for violence. It could hurt the person who wielded it just as easily as his opponent, he said. Look what good it did our ancestor. Did a blade ever save him? If anything, it was what got him into trouble, from the second it first spilled a god's blood. And it was all of us Kurosakis who'd been paying for it ever since, right on down the centuries.

But there was a reason they were still here. A sword was made to be used, and that was what I intended to do.

"Hi-so-ka, come out and pla-ay," the yato-no-kami's childlike voice echoed outside the walls. "I've waited so long to see you again, so why must you hide from me? Come out and we'll have some fun, just like old times."

The lock on the chest opened to me with a muffled crack. I knew I didn't have much time. Not as much time as I would have liked to test each sword's weight and balance in my hand.

I had to rely on intuition. And memory. My empathy generally only works on people, but sometimes a particularly treasured possession will carry a trace of its owner's emotional state. I wasn't sure how long such a trace would last, though.

I lucked out. As I closed my eyes, willed my mind open, and passed my hand over the swords' grips, one stood out almost immediately. It was old, its red braiding faded to a dusty pink, the bronze hand guard aged to a dark patina. But I could feel the strength of the blade inside—or at least, someone centuries ago had trusted his life to it. He'd believed in it with everything he had, and that was good enough for me.

My confidence flowed again as my palm molded to the ridges of the grip. The sword was a comforting weight in my hand when I walked out to find my opponent waiting for me. "If you want me so bad, come and get me."

The child scowled. "What was wrong with 'Kagome'?"

"Nothing," I said. "I've just grown out of it." And I wasn't about to play the bird in the cage for this bastard.

"So, this is the kind of game you want to play. No fair. I don't have anything to defend myself with but my own two hands."

They had more than enough power to send a blast of deadly energy my way, though.

But I was prepared. My defenses, focused down the length of the sword, deflected the brunt of it into the side of the house. I could feel the wood crack inside the scabbard under the heat and pressure, and discarded it as I moved around for a better angle of attack.

The child scoffed when he saw the naked blade. "Your ancestor wielded a great sword when he did battle with me, one that was already legendary in its own right, and even that could not destroy me completely. Do you actually propose to hurt me with that rusty knife?"

It had been a while since the blade was polished, but it was sharp. "It can still cut you, can't it? That's all that matters to me."

I charged him, alternating my style of attack, throwing everything at him that I had once practiced planning to use on Muraki. His desperation grew visibly the quicker I came after him, and the more my "rusty knife" scratched him. I had expected more from an ancient god of the land, but his human body made him slow, his counterattacks predictable and distracted, easy to deflect. And he knew it. Maybe he had expected me to have qualms about fighting a child, but I knew that if he found an opening, he would not hesitate to kill me. I couldn't afford to be any different.

At last, the edge of my blade caught him on a descending swing, ripping a gash deep into his torso before the tip caught in his spine.

I backed up a step while the child stared at his wound, gushing black blood, in horror, looking all of seven once again. Even if the yato-no-kami was at the helm, his human body was not immune to mortal pain. I could take some small amount of pleasure in knowing that I made him suffer.

He may have had the look of a human child, he may have called himself my brother, but I knew I must not pity him. I had to finish what I started—I had to finish him off. My hands tightened around the grip of the sword, and I focused my aim on the skinny column of his neck.

_—_

_"That was poorly done."_

Whatever I had been about to do, sudden blinding pain erased all thought of it from my brain.

I grimaced. One hand slipped from the sword's grip to clutch my head, as if that alone could keep it from exploding. The voice stabbed its way into my mind from every direction, as if every pebble and blade of grass in the land around me had risen up as one to penetrate my skull. It rumbled deep through the ground under my feet.

I saw the child's lips vaguely move to form the words, but the light had gone out of his eyes. As I watched, transfixed by my horror, his body contorted and bent back away from the wound as if on a hinge. Swallowing back my breakfast, I prepared myself for the sight of viscera.

Instead, a mucous bubble emerged from the wound, expanding from the inside out and upward. Something moved and shifted inside it—massive coils that could not have fit inside that child's body, even if it was growing at a grotesque and amazing speed.

As a child, I'd spent whole days in summer just watching insects hatch from their pupal cases. In a way, this was no different. But in another. . . .

Pupa was an accurate name for my self-proclaimed brother. In the end, he was no more than a doll, inhabited by a creature far larger and stronger. But what broke through that sac and climbed out of his body was no fragile butterfly.

A giant serpent rose up above me, its scales slick with ichor. Its head was bulbous and knobbed as if by leprosy, and framed by hair like hanging moss. The stuff of prehistoric ghost stories. The way it stared down at me, I couldn't fool myself for an instant that this was some dumb beast. One look in its eyes and I could sense its intelligence, its ancientness. All the generations of Kurosakis it had seen born and brought low, all the way back to the one who came here to slay it. It had been in these hills hundreds of thousands of years before Ren ever set foot in this village. What was the life of one more of that impious man's spawn compared to that?

For the first time since coming here, I had serious doubts that this was something I could fight, and live. I felt my whole being saturated with insignificance and impotence under the snake god's stare, and, for a moment, faltered.

"_For that, shinigami, I should flay you alive a thousand times over,_" the yato-no-kami said. "_That body you so carelessly destroyed was to be my new beginning, the first in a new line of sacrifices for my vengeance—a more _obedient_ line than the one that came before it."_

I could all but feel the barbs in his words in my skin, and knew who they were meant for. "After all my parents offered up for you . . . What, their own children's _blood_ wasn't good enough?"

The yato-no-kami roared in outrage, an old hurt.

_"Only living flesh and blood can satisfy me, servant of death. Your forebears knew that, and yet they continued to defy me. Your_ father . . ." Again with the creepy lilt. _"He presumed to deny me what was rightfully mine."_

I snorted. "A male heir?"

_"The ideal body to make my vengeance on the Kurosaki line complete. But that too he let slip away, incompetent man. Yes, Hisoka, I had great plans for you. Had you only lived long enough to see them through._

_"My blood is strong in your veins. I could sense it from an early age. Your emerging power. . . ."_ The yato-no-kami hissed in a breath, as if tasting me on the air, the scent of my thoughts. _"That's right. You do not misunderstand me, boy. It is no coincidence that you have this ability to read what is in another's soul. Even the color of your eyes—surely you must have guessed that these are not natural. Surely you must have suspected their source, these . . ._ gifts_, hidden away within your DNA—"_

"Gifts? Don't you mean this curse?"

_"Curse? Indeed. . . ."_ A chuckle. _"With your perfect body under my command, I would have unleashed a plague on this village the likes of which it has never seen! Their pathetic prayers would protect them no longer._ That _would have been worthy of the name curse! And it was my _right_. Your grandfather may have chosen to defy me, but what he failed to foresee was that his choice would only make my blessings stronger. You are as much my child as you are Nagare's. Or that god-killer, Ren's. Perhaps more so. You have felt as much in your soul. The things you have done. The desires you lock away in the depths of your soul__—desires for blood, for vengeance! Yes, t_he two of us are very much alike."

I didn't respond, but gripped the sword tighter. Was this how Tsuzuki felt when told he was a demon's child? Like his whole existence was a sin against nature? But he had endured it, and so would I.

_"It is only a pity you were taken from this world before I was able to regain my full power in it. But rest assured,"_ the yato-no-kami said. _"Your father suffered for his failures. I must concede, he played the part of the willing sacrifice tremendously, though no amount of enthusiasm would save him or his family. In that way, perhaps, you may take after that man. I took my pleasure of him . . . and he suffered most beautifully. One might even say he was glad for it, by the end."_

A susurrating sound that I assumed must be the serpent's laugh emerged from its lips, and inside I cringed. I had some idea what he meant, I knew that it was as humiliating as what had happened to me, and that was enough. The yato-no-kami knew about my powers, and I didn't want the mental images and impressions of feeling he was sure to send my way to weigh me down. If I allowed myself to be distracted by his taunts, I might as well surrender.

I raised my mental defenses, and focused my thoughts on the real, physical threat in front of me. As the yato-no-kami bobbed and wove, I awaited his attack.

_"Brave little warrior,"_ he purred. _"Little Susanoo with your rusty dagger. You are only half the size of your noble ancestor, yet far more tragic. I should like nothing more than the pleasure of seeing you suffer as well."_

The threats slapped about wetly between the serpent's jaws. Something was moving inside its mouth, but I couldn't make out what. I feared the sharpness of teeth.

Instead, when it unhinged its jaws and struck, it was a dozen tongues that shot out at me, quick as a squid leaping on its prey, and just as slimy. And it was half luck that I managed to evade them. I felt one lash my leg, but it wasn't able to grab hold.

The serpent looped around, rearing for another attack; and this time when I saw those tentacle-tongues coming at me, I stepped aside, and swung the blade. With everything I had.

The thing roared as it recoiled. I stood my ground and let the wave of its injury break around me, composing myself for more. Rusty or no, the blade was still plenty sharp enough to cut through those thick, and no doubt tender, appendages.

_"You will pay dearly for that!"_ the god vowed, mouth dripping black, oily blood.

"I have no doubt," I said. A smile must have come to my face, despite what surely awaited me. "I intend to commit deicide like my ancestor before me. Only this time, it won't be you doing the punishing, yato-no-kami. This time, I'll make sure there's nothing left of you to utter a whimper, let alone a curse!"

—

In my desperation, I reached for the most effective weapon I could think of, the most powerful in my arsenal. I knew what the risks were if it didn't work, or if it backfired, but what choice did I have? It was a risk I had to take. And I wouldn't even need a prop to pull it off.

Just something a little harder to come by at the present moment: a few precious seconds of concentration.

When the serpent attacked me the next time, I didn't dodge him. I met him head-on, thrusting the point of my sword into the roof of his mouth. Though black ichor slicked my hands, coated my wrists, I held my ground.

But my sword didn't hold him. His toothless jaws were stronger than I'd anticipated, and with a mere twist of the head, the old blade snapped in half. I saw the point of it lodged in his mouth flash as he snapped at me again, but disapparated out of reach before those jaws could close around my arm, and twist me the same way.

To the yato-no-kami, it was an act of cowardice, and he laughed again. _"Now we are evenly matched! You cannot hope to defeat me, boy. Give up now. Surrender to the fate that body of yours was made for. Surrender to your ultimate death."_

_You will never win against him._ It was someone else who had spoken those words to me, about a different opponent. But I had refused to listen to them then, and I certainly wouldn't listen to this monster's taunts now. When the serpent circled around again, I was ready for him.

His attack met the wall of my shields, but my strength was flagging, my shields lost their sting, and he was more determined than ever to gnaw his way through and finish our fight.

That was what I was counting on. My hands still gripping the handle of the broken sword so hard I thought they would break, the yato-no-kami's energy beating against my own, I chanted the words that would begin the _reibaku_ sequence.

The serpent only scoffed when he figured out what I was up to. _"A soul-capture spell? You really believe that will work on a being such as I, shinigami?"_

I gritted my teeth, and shut out his words. Nothing he said could be trusted. It would work—it must work, or else why would he try to distract me?

_"__I am a part of this land. I was here before the lake, before the trees—before your ancestor was even the merest of thoughts in a monkey's testicles. How do you expect to banish me from this place when so many others have failed? Or perhaps you do not understand where it is my power comes from."_

Maybe I didn't. But I didn't care. If I failed, one way or another I was finished, and the yato-no-kami would be free to exact that revenge he spoke of on the living. That knowledge and that alone kept me on my course. As a Kurosaki, dead or not, I had a duty to defend. As a Kurosaki, I must not fail.

Like the head of a match catching flame, the spell burst to life. A ball of spinning light reached out to wrap the yato-no-kami in its embrace. I could sense the serpent had not expected it to be quite as constricting as it was.

But then the light reached out to enfold me as well. That took us both by surprise.

Although, somehow after it happened, it seemed like the only natural outcome.

_"I warned you!"_ The yato-no-kami's triumph was a tangible thing to me; wrapped up in the shell of the _reibaku_, it beat against me like the wings of a struggling bird. _"Did I not say that you and I were of one blood? You cannot hide your true nature from the _reibaku_'s light any more than you can hide it from that which made you!_

_"It's my blood that runs in your veins, Hisoka! Exorcise me, and you might as well exorcise the DNA from your very cells!"_

He was right. I could feel it the moment I began to pull my left hand from the blade's hilt—and the shock of sudden, shooting pain flashed black spots across my vision. Like pulling at a scab, only to watch as living flesh peeled off with it. Except in this case, the wound reached deep inside me, deep down to the very core of who I was. Every nerve in my body was attached to it, every bone and every vein. Even Muraki's curse could not penetrate that kind of agony. But it could resonate in sympathy with it, to make matters worse than I thought they could possibly be.

If I continued on—well, I wasn't sure I could continue on. I wasn't sure that I could willingly inflict that kind of torture on myself, let alone survive it long enough to accomplish my goal.

But if I didn't . . .

The yato-no-kami could sense my hesitation. He was far from unaffected; I could sense that much through the din of my own hell. But how much? Was he right to warn me my struggle was all in vain? Or was that just a lie, meant to stop me doing what was right? How could I know unless I tried?

_"You won't succeed at this folly,"_ his voice boomed over the storm in my own nerves. _"You cannot kill me! Not without killing yourself."_

I felt a grin touch my lips at his choice of words, despite everything else.

"Then I guess I don't have much to lose, seeing as I'm already dead."

I took my hand completely off the broken sword then, and thrust my arms out to my sides. Even though it felt like cleaving myself in two. I don't know how I remained on my feet, let alone maintained my concentration for the spell. Maybe everything that I'd endured at Muraki's hands and after was preparing me for this moment, and that was the only reason I didn't pass out straight away. I only knew that I had to finish the spell or this was all for naught. Even if it flayed me layer by layer down to my very soul, I had to see it through.

My ears were filled with the roar of pure energy surrounding us, and his own. His body coiled and spasmed around me. One of his shortened tongues shot out and wrapped itself around my throat. _"Silence—"_ the yato-no-kami tried, _"Stop this—"_

But my lips kept forming words I didn't know I knew, even as I struggled for air. Beneath my sleeves, the marks of my curse glowed with a violent brightness I had never seen before, but for once I was not afraid or ashamed to see them. For once, they were the least of my concerns.

The wind around us turned hot, blistering. It erupted into flames, but I barely felt it. What was a little heat compared to the rending I felt inside? Now I knew what special hell I had put Tsuzuki through when I performed the spell on him; but I could not be shaken by remorse for something that happened years ago. At least I took comfort in the knowledge that I wasn't the only one feeling it now.

_"How is this possible?"_ The serpent's awe was crystal clear to me, a small victory that nevertheless felt like a triumph. _"You should not be doing this. This is no ordinary _reibaku_."_

"No," I rasped through my teeth, through my collapsing windpipe. I didn't know what it was either, or how I was doing it. _But then, I'm no ordinary human. Am I?_ I spoke directly to his consciousness, which I could feel entwined with mine. _I'm not even an ordinary shinigami._

The snake god wailed. Now he knew mortal fear, now he knew disbelief, and powerlessness. Now he knew what it was like to be a Kurosaki heir. I saw his eyes fly wide, his pupils narrow to slits so thin they almost disappeared, as though in doing so they could shut out the sight of his own death.

That was followed by the most intense pain I had ever, and hope to ever, experience. And then, at last, there was nothing.

—

For a while, everything was black. I didn't dream, or feel anything at all. There was simply nothing. For a while, I was dead.

I don't know how much time passed, but when I came to, it looked like a bomb had gone off. The field around me was scorched and black, and the nearest trees had been stripped of their leaves and bark. I was in slightly better shape, considering, but I probably didn't look it. I certainly didn't feel it. I felt as if someone had turned me inside-out. My clothes were charred, my skin underneath raw and tender to the touch. Some places were still bleeding. Whatever had happened here, it was more than my cells could readily heal.

But I was in one piece, still alive. That was impressive in itself.

And I was alone. The yato-no-kami was nowhere to be seen.

Or felt, for that matter. When I extended my thoughts out across the grounds, nothing came back but silence. Pure, blissful silence. If the yato-no-kami remained, it was in so small and weakened a form I could not feel it. And if it didn't—

Well, it was surely a triumph, but I didn't want to think too much about what that might mean. How could I have done what I did? All I knew was the _reibaku_ spell I had started to speak. I had no idea how it got so out of control, or how I could have wielded something so powerful.

But a larger question pressed upon me: If what I'd done had exorcised the god's very essence, then how was I still here? How was it I had not destroyed myself in the process?

Whatever the answer, I didn't have it, and finding it could wait. I didn't want to stay in that place a moment longer than I had to.

I pushed myself gingerly to my feet. Everything ached or stung, or some dreadful combination of both. I sucked in a breath, and it burned in my lungs, made my throat close down around it and my body seize up to expel what felt like a million little needles. But I gave it time, calmed my racing heart, and slowly unfurled myself, willed my muscles to move. Yes, it was excruciating, but I had suffered much, much worse. This was a good ache, a sign I had survived. Walk it off, I told myself. It can only get better the more I move. And with that mantra beneath my breath, I began to walk.

I don't know where I thought I was going. Anywhere away from the site of my battle with the yato-no-kami was an improvement. One foot in front of the other—that was all I cared about, and consequently I didn't notice where they were carrying me.

Until it all started to feel oddly familiar.

Like a poem repeated so many times, the lips remember forming the words more than the conscious mind does itself. Feet and lips, walking with their own rhythm—and mine had dragged me unknowingly, for the second time, under the cherry trees.

_I know the grass beyond the door_, the words rose up out of my deep memory, some English poem we had to learn in middle school literature. _The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. . . ._

I knew the grass here, the way it smelled when it was crushed. The way it felt under my naked back. Wet and green. Ingrown with the moss that liked it there beneath the cherries' shade.

I still remembered the way their branches spread out above me. Every day in Meifu, under the branches that never stop flowering, reminded me of these very trees, in this very grove, and everything they had witnessed.

But these ones had changed. Their leaves had browned and fallen off, the ones that still remained barely clinging on. The grass around my feet was ripe with their rotting. It had been different the last time I was here, a very different kind of sweet. This was the sweetness of autumn, not spring. Decay, not newness. The breeze rustling through hadn't sounded so hoarse back then, like a diseased lung struggling to take in breath.

I should have felt something.

This was the scene of my death. My first and true death. Where Muraki had violated me, and mutilated me with the curse I still wore, etched into my skin. I'd thought at very least it would resonate with the energy of this place. Like it would know it was home. I expected searing pain. But if in fact I felt any, the pain of my burns must have overwhelmed it, because I really didn't feel anything different.

And _that_ made me angry.

Why should it, I asked myself. Didn't I want to be free of him? Didn't I want to forget that whole night ever happened? Why would I want to be reminded of it, here at the spot where it all began? So I could continue to play the victim—hold on to the singular moment that everything I had left was taken from me because it was the only way I could feel, the only way I knew how to live? Hating him, hating myself—wallowing in what I had become like his curse was the only thing that gave any meaning to my existence?

Yes! And why shouldn't I feel that way? I never asked to be murdered. Muraki might have thought it, but I never asked to be touched that way, tortured that way, cursed and left to die. I was right to hate him with everything I had. I was right to be angry, to want justice. To want revenge. To want him to feel the way he'd made me feel those three long years I lay trying to die, wishing for oblivion.

I was justified in wanting to make his life a living hell.

So what if it made my afterlife one at the same time. I wasn't there by choice. And, since the day I arrived to work at the Summons Division, I knew that if I didn't remember what it was that had put me there—if I ever forgot it—

Then what? I would lose the whole reason for my existence?

But I would, wouldn't I? Without a reason to keep going, a killer to keep searching for, I was nothing. I might as well not exist.

I had thought for sure that grove would remind me of it where the unchanging existence of a shinigami had slowly lulled me into a state of complacency. I thought this had been the place whose demons I was least prepared to face when I set out from my hotel that morning.

And instead, the trees here had nothing to say. They were worse than the cherries back at Enma-cho.

I couldn't even tell which one's roots I'd felt digging into my back, or which one's branches I'd stared at while I lay there trying unsuccessfully to imagine myself anywhere else. I'd thought those were the sorts of things that would stay with me always, written into my soul in ink as indelible as whatever Muraki had carved into me—that I'd find telltale signs carved into a trunk, or scraped into the earth. I figured our respective emotions that night, at very least my own terror, would have been strong enough to leave a lasting impression in the landscape—one to last for years, if not decades. But there was nothing.

The grove had forgotten me.

Even the land had forgotten. In a flash of either whimsy or desperation, I bent and dug my fingers into the dirt, lifting out a handful of soil, chunks of grass and small rocks. It was cold and wet on my burned skin; I could feel its grit under my nails. But if my blood had ever soaked this soil, it was long gone now.

I won't forget, I told myself, a stubborn rage rising hot within me. That cherry grove might tell me to move on, Meifu might tell me to move on, but I wouldn't. None of them could understand what had happened to me, the enormity of it. No matter what else I encountered in this afterlife, what had happened here between Muraki and me wasn't something to "get over." I crushed the dirt in my hand and let it spill over the sides. What I wanted wasn't something that could be accomplished with relics, with material proof. I had to keep it within me, nurture it inside me, if I wanted it to survive.

And without question, I wanted it to survive. Even if it poisoned me, ate away at me from the inside out like a cancer, it was mine. I couldn't just throw it away. I couldn't if I tried. Its roots were too deep, too tangled around who I was. More so, even, than what lurked in my DNA.

And I was afraid of what might happen if I tried to reach in and cut them out.

—

I considered staying away permanently then. The thought of going back to business as usual and pretending I wasn't what I was was almost unbearable.

But that wasn't a very realistic option, or smart. Not showing up for work in the land of the dead meant more than just abandoning your job. It meant a full-fledged investigation, in which peace-keeping forces were called out to track you down like dogs and make sure you, an indentured servant of King Enma's court, weren't just trying to cause trouble for the living. I'd only heard about it happening once since I'd become a shinigami, and it wasn't pleasant what happened to the guy when he was caught. Not that there's any punishment worse for an employee of Juuohcho than to remain in his line of work.

But the last thing I needed was for the details of my life to come out in a high-profile investigation. Then there would be no hiding what I was from Tsuzuki.

As soon as I could muster up the strength, I transported myself to the first safe place I could think of: the back room of Watari's office.

I overshot it a little, though, and where I ended up was a mess. I lost balance, and when I reached out to catch myself, I knocked over some rather precariously stacked books and instruments. The noise was horrendous. One of Watari's bird friends freaked and skittered out of the room with a loud squeak. I thought for sure I would be discovered then. I thought for sure the whole building would hear the racket I made.

To my relief, the first human face I saw looming over me was Watari's, his eyes wide and headphones down on his shoulders. Must have been why he didn't respond right away to the commotion.

"Bon! What the hell?"

"Are you alone right now? Is anyone else here with you?"

"Yeah, sure, I'm alone—but look at you! What in god's good heaven have you gotten yourself into this time?"

I must have looked like a nightmare. And smelled like one, for that matter, like—well, exactly what I was, charred meat and hair. But he didn't show it. Next thing I knew, he was reaching for me, rubber-gloved hands dragging me bodily out of that mess and ushering me to the correct room, the one we sometimes used as an infirmary.

—

He sat me down. I protested a little bit, wanting to get my excuse out first, but he wouldn't take no for an answer.

I knew once my butt hit the bed, I wouldn't be able to get up again. I didn't want to, either. Now that I was off my feet and out of those haunted, burnt-out grounds, I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and not wake up for a month. But I had to stay awake a little longer.

While Watari examined my injuries, I told him everything that had happened to me since he gave me my family's file: about my return to the house and the lake, the child that turned out to be the yato-no-kami's incarnation, and the fire afterwards. Everything I thought he needed to know, anyway. I could see a judgment start to form on his face at the outset, a vague told-you-so that I knew I deserved, but he held it back for my sake. Especially when I got to the part about the snake god. He forgot all about chastising me then.

"Finally I performed the _reibaku_ on him. It seemed to do the trick." I left out the bit about its doing the trick on _me _as well. "Then I teleported back here."

"Well, from the look of ya, you're lucky to've survived," Watari said when I'd finished. "Jeezus, Bon, I can't tell you how sorry I am. If we'd known the babe was still alive when it came out, we would have taken better care getting rid of it."

I shook my head. "But how could you have? You and Tatsumi were already fighting the kami on one front. How were you supposed to know the exorcism wasn't going to be enough? I know you guys aren't sloppy. You must have had good reason to think the . . . baby," I struggled with the word, "was already dead. Otherwise, if Enma'd thought the kid was going to be an issue, shouldn't it have shown up on the death registry?"

"It would have been part of our mission goals. But we were just told to look into Rui—I mean, your mother's condition."

Then his eyes lit up, and I could see the pieces falling into place. "That's just it, though. We were sent to investigate her _condition_. The case file said nothing about a pregnancy, because Enma didn't know she _was_ pregnant! We only learned that after a little snooping round. And the spud didn't show up on the death registry because it only records _human_ souls!"

He laughed out loud and slapped his fist in his palm. Then, remembering I was there and it was my mother he was talking about, he sobered. "Sorry."

"Don't be. Now we know why the child escaped."

"Yeah, but the point is it shouldn't have. If me and Tatsumi'd just done our jobs and been a little more thorough—"

"You didn't know, Watari."

"But we _should_ have. Right? We should have figured it out. And then you wouldn't be in this mess. You could have died facing that thing, and it would have been our fault—"

"It wasn't your fault," I stopped him, and finally he shut up for more than a second. "It was mine. _I_ made the decision to go into that place, even though you warned me it was a bad idea. _I_ decided not to listen, to take my chances. And frankly, I'm thankful I did. If not, I might never have learned the truth." Not all of it, anyway. I would have known only half the story, and spared myself a lot of pain and torment.

But I would have been only half-complete for it.

"Watari?"

"Hm?" I could feel his gaze back on me, even though suddenly I couldn't look him in the eye. "What's on your mind?"

"Something the yato-no-kami said to me. . . ." I'd long since stopped hearing its voice, its terrible voice, but the way it had smiled at me, in that child's face so similar to my own, I couldn't get it out of my mind. "How come my death was never investigated?"

He didn't answer right away. I don't know if he got the connection, or if he just pretended not to.

"I mean, it was suspicious enough to raise a red flag or two. Wasn't it? It took me three years to die, for crying out loud! Wasn't the Summons Division ever alerted to my case in any of that time? After everything that man put me through. . . . Were they aware of it, and just let it _happen_? Or did—"

I could barely say the words, but I pushed them out, through my teeth.

"You said the registry only records the deaths of human souls—"

Watari wouldn't let me finish. "Don't say that, Bon. You're human. Why wouldn't you be?"

_You're human. I guarantee it._ I'd said the same thing to Tsuzuki once. Because I wanted him to believe it. Because he'd been human enough to me.

But that didn't make it true.

"The yato-no-kami . . . he told me . . . He said I had _his_ blood—"

"And you believe the word of a giant snake over mine?" He smiled, tried to sound hurt, but the jovial spin he was trying to put on it wasn't fooling either of us. I guess I must have started to tear up or something, because he put both hands on my shoulders, and braced them. "Hey. You're human, Hisoka. As human as me or Tatsumi or the chief. No matter what else, you're plenty enough human to count, anyway, and that's what matters. That's _all_ that matters. You hear me?"

I did. That was the first time I could remember Watari calling me by my given name, too. I could appreciate how much it meant.

He had started making notes on the extent of my burns. Afraid he was going to show them to someone, I managed to ask him between his mumbling to himself if he minded if we kept this between us. And if I stayed there a while to recover. "I still have five days left on my vacation—well, five work days. But I can't let the chief see me like this or there'll be hell to pay." Though, if I were honest, it was really Tsuzuki I was most worried about finding out.

And Tatsumi, as well. I didn't want him feeling guilty for failing to prevent my injury. He had enough weighing on his conscience without adding my own stupid stunts to the list. And our relationship was fragile enough as it was. I didn't want to ruin what little bit of trust and mutual understanding we had.

"Seems like you've already paid it." Watari blinked. "But I sure ain't lettin' you go out like this. You kidding? 'Course you can stay here, Bon. I'll just say I'm working on a new sex-change concoction or something, they'll give this place a _wide_ berth. Besides, burns like this . . ." He winced in sympathy. "We'll be lucky if we can get you back to normal that soon. I'll write up a list of some exercises and treatments we can try—"

"But can you do it?"

"Is that a challenge?" If it was, it was just the spark he needed to light a fire underneath himself. He rolled up his sleeves and grinned. "You just watch and see! If we can't get you back one-hundred-percent, we'll at least have you up and—I don't know—whacking moles within the week!"

"Moles?"

"Hey. You haven't seen Enma-cho's moles. Talk about your rodents of unusual size."

He whistled, and I laughed. Just a little.

It was only after I caught myself that I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had. And the way Watari was looking at me, he must have accomplished his first goal on the list.

—

Those five days in Watari's care were some of the shortest five days in my recent memory, and mostly because I spent most of the time sleeping. I'm not sure if Watari gave me something, or if I was just so exhausted from everything I'd done in Kamakura or the extent of my injuries, I slept like . . . well, pardon the metaphor but like the dead. Hardly even dreamed.

When I did dream, it was of the yato-no-kami. I'd wake, more relieved than I could say to find I was back in Meifu, safe in Watari's lab, and the echoes of whatever nightmare I'd been in quickly fading away.

But I would still eventually have to face reality.

I had a god's blood in me.

A nature god's, a kami's, and diluted at that, but still strong enough to have made me an empath. Still strong enough for that ability to do exactly what the yato-no-kami wanted, and ruin my family. That blood was strong enough to help me endure everything that's happened to me since then, where others might have given up or been destroyed, and strong enough to ignite the air with just the right words. Words I would swear I didn't even know—until I was speaking them.

So this was how Tsuzuki felt when we were in Kyoto together. I'd put on a brave face and accepted him in my heart no matter what, brought down my walls to let him in, and yet I still hadn't truly understood. All that shame, that self-hate that came with knowing you weren't entirely human, knowing you were something never meant to exist, something that could come to no good. . . .

No, I hadn't understood in the least.

Until it happened to me.

It wasn't just the kami's words that echoed around me in my dreams. I could feel in them all the hatred he had nurtured for my family, even centuries after the one who killed him died himself. He could not let go. Even after his body was destroyed, his spiritual essence banished to another plane and locked up in his own enemy's genes—even while he watched one Kurosaki head after another succumb to the curse he'd placed on our line, still he could not let go of that anger, that burning, consuming hate.

In that way, were he and I so different after all?

I had freed myself from one curse, but another remained. One I'd been searching for a solution for all along, and now that I was here, I wasn't wholly sure that I wanted it to be lifted. Just a week ago, the notion that I would be in this state of mind would have been offensive to me. But now . . .

When I dragged myself out of bed each of those five days to check my body's progress in the mirror, it was the harsh red lines of Muraki's curse I'd see staring back at me. Faint at first through the layers of new skin, but I knew what to look for, and saw it growing darker with each day.

The difference now, what had changed within me since Kamakura, was that now I was relieved to see them reappear. Can you believe that? Each day I woke up with that curse still in me was another day I was chained to that monster, and to that night he robbed me of everything.

But each day I woke up with that curse was another day I existed here, in Meifu, with the only people I think I could ever truly call friends. It was another day I'd escaped the yato-no-kami's plans for me, and my father's and uncle's as well. Each day I still had my curse was another day I still had Tsuzuki, and my reason for being.

And my anger.

I'll never beat him, Muraki's friend had told me back in Kyoto, as long as I cling to that. Hate had already consumed him long before he met me; trying to fight him with more would only make his hold over me stronger. If I truly wanted to defeat Muraki, I couldn't let myself be controlled by my memories. So long as I did, I kept myself under his power, and my own in fetters. So long as I did, his victory over me and his destruction of everything that was good and pure in myself—what little there had been to begin with—was complete.

But how to free myself? To do the opposite meant gratitude, forgiveness, and I didn't think I could ever forgive. I didn't want to. My hatred for that man had given me a reason to continue on, a reason to fight.

But wasn't that the same reason that kept the yato-no-kami alive all those hundreds of years?

How long could I hold on to my grudge after Muraki finally died? How many innocent lives would my vengeance take before it was satisfied? Would it ever be?

And if it was, if all my resentment ever disappeared, would I still be here without it? Just a blank slate, an empty vessel?

Would it be like that night, and all that pain I had to go through, never even happened?

—

"Who else knows what was in that file?" I asked Watari once when he came to check up on me.

"No one besides myself and Tatsumi, I should think. Well, and the chief," he added on second thought. "And Enma, of course."

My stomach sank. "Enma, too, huh."

Watari blinked at me. "Well, he'd have to. It's kinda his business to know what goes on with his own subjects. But me and Tatsumi are the only ones who know what things were really like there in the thick of it."

In other words, I read between the lines, there was a chance they hadn't included _everything_ in the official report.

It hadn't been my first concern, but now that he mentioned it, I did wonder how much of my family history and its curse had factored into Enma's decision to put me through shinigami training. I used to think I was brought on because of Muraki, but if Enma knew all along that I had god's blood in me. . . .

Was I just another pawn he was putting into place? And for what purpose? Or were Watari and I really the only two people who knew just how deep my connection to the yato-no-kami went? For that matter, I wasn't even sure _I_ knew where that rabbit hole ended.

None of that seemed to cross Watari's mind, of course. He looked at me sideways and, after a moment, said, "If you're worried I'm gonna tell Tsuzuki about any of this . . . Don't. It wouldn't be my place."

"I appreciate that."

"That's what you were trying to ask me all along, wasn't it? Hah, I'm not too bad at this psychic thing myself!"

Now that I was sure my secret was safe, it felt like one huge weight had been lifted from me; but that didn't mean I was free of the others. My shoulders ached from the burden, and I wrapped my arms tight around myself.

I must have looked depressed something awful, because Watari's mood changed in an instant. "Oh dear. I've stepped in it again, haven't I?"

"No. It's me. It's Tsuzuki. I just don't want anything to change between us." We'd already changed, after Kyoto, and I wasn't a hundred-percent sure it was for the better, or that we were any more honest with one another, even if in other ways we were closer. "Kyoto was hard enough on him." If he found out _I_ wasn't completely human either . . . well, let's just say I didn't think we'd bond over our similarities. "I can't willfully inflict that kind of guilt on him. He's carrying around enough as it is, don't you think?"

Watari still smiled at me over his glasses, but it had sombered. "More than his share," he agreed.

"It's not like I don't know what that feels like. I do. That's why I want to protect him. I just can't believe. . . ."

I shook my head.

"Some things you kind of wish you could un-learn. You know? Like what happened to my sister. . . ." I looked down at my hands, at the bandages that still covered my palms as if hiding some shameful familial leprosy. "I guess I always knew father didn't really want me, but I never thought it was in his nature . . . To kill his own child . . ."

"What?" But Watari knew what I meant. "No, Bon, you got it all wrong. Is—is that what you took away from our reports?"

I blinked up at him. "Isn't that what happened? My uncle murdered my older sister to make way for a male heir. My father never wanted her, just like he never wanted me. Neither one of us could give him what he needed."

"Quite the opposite! Bon, your father _loved_ your older sister. When your uncle killed her . . ." To Watari's credit, he looked completely stunned. "Look, I'm sorry you ever got that impression, but your father had nothing to do with it. It all happened behind his back. He adored your sister. Hell, if you could've heard him talk about her, she was the light of his life. I had to wonder if a part of him died with her. He didn't wanna get married again after your aunt died. It was that brother of his's idea, and if your aunt and your mother'd never looked so much alike—"

"Then he never wanted to have another child. He just did it because it was his obligation. To continue the cursed line. I was nothing more than a replacement to him."

I must have hit the nail square on the head, because Watari made no attempts to correct me. Just stared at me sadly, and sighed.

"He wanted the line to end with him," he said flatly. Quietly, as if afraid the noise might disturb some sleeping specter. "That was what your grandfather wanted. That's why he chose your father to inherit the curse, rather than his eldest son as clan tradition should have dictated. Because he knew he could count on your father to fulfill that wish. _That_ was why the yato-no-kami was so bent on avenging himself on your parents. He thought they were denying something that was rightfully his. A proper heir to torture."

He didn't say so, but his meaning was clear: someone special, someone "gifted." Someone like me. Hadn't the yato-no-kami said just as much himself?

"He took your death as an intentional spite."

"But that's not what happened! It was Muraki's fault. Anyone with half a brain could have seen—"

"But he didn't want to, Bon. He'd already made up his mind. And so had your father. After what happened to you and your sister, he wasn't going to give that snake any more kids to torture. It was gonna end with him. He was gonna be the final sacrifice."

Torture. Sacrifice. Did my father really think he was saving me from those things? They'd found me anyway, if maybe not in the form the yato-no-kami had intended.

"So, it's a good thing I died. I'm better off this way. Is that it?"

Watari looked horrified that I would even suggest it. He looked like he wanted to grab me, but must have known it would be harder to lie if I touched him. "Wha—No! I never said that—"

"But you thought it. You must have, at some point."

That he couldn't deny.

"Look. I'm _not_ saying what Muraki did to you was for the best," he said after what felt like a long time. "There's nothing that can justify doing that to a person, ever. Nothing!

"_But_. . . ." It came out cautiously. And there was the kicker. "Has being here really been that bad? I mean, I was there myself. I saw the kind of life you would've led if you'd stayed. The kind of life you _did_ have. I know no one deserves the kind of shit that bastard put you through. But you got a second chance out of it, didn't you? A _better_ chance. You got us."

—

He was right about that, at least. Even if it had taken me so long to accept it.

I had Tatsumi and the chief, Terazuma and Wakaba. Watari was continuously proving to me how much he had my back.

And still, somehow—though I'd almost lost track of it over the last week of my vacation—I had Tsuzuki.

When my thoughts weren't still churning over everything that had happened in Kamakura, they turned to him.

I missed him. More than anything, I missed him. It had been less than two weeks, but we'd never been apart for that long in all our time knowing each other. I'd never known until being confined to an infirmary bed how much I depended on just his presence to keep me going. At one point I thought I heard him whistling under the window. At another, I heard Watari talking to him over the phone, swore I even heard them mention me, and it made me sad to think that no matter how hard I strained to hear his voice, I couldn't. I wanted to bolt out of bed and go to him right then, even if just to spy on him from the shadows. Even if just to see that nothing had changed for him while I'd been through so much—that he was still his constant self, and that he hadn't used my absence as an opportunity to disappear.

I was feeling well enough for that, I thought. The pain that still bothered me was negligible, I could walk it off.

Only the fear of him seeing me vulnerable like that was strong enough to overwhelm every other desire. I was supposed to be enjoying my weeks off. What would he think if I came back with first-degree burns? Not that I was sunbathing, that's for sure. I was afraid that somehow my empathy would suddenly work both ways when I saw him again, and he'd be able to see everything I'd learned about myself as if it were written in my skin. He would be able to see what I was. And even if in some very wrong way that made us even, and none of it was his fault to begin with . . .

I didn't want to know what that knowledge would do to him. Nor did I want to roll the dice and find out.

Maybe in that way, father and I weren't so different from one another. Though I could never be sure whether he ever loved me—no matter what Watari would have me believe—he sacrificed so much in his struggle to protect me from the truth about myself.

And ultimately failed, of course. But I don't believe it was through any conscious fault of his own. If I were honest with myself, I couldn't say that I didn't share the sentiment. The same intention. And the same contradiction. Was it really Tsuzuki I thought to protect, or myself? Maybe everything we do for the sake of the ones we care most about is really, inherently, a selfish act. But that doesn't make it wrong.

Unfortunately, it doesn't make it wholly right, either.

—

Before I knew it, my vacation was over, and it was time for Watari to kick me out of his lab. I don't know about giant moles, but I did feel well enough to face my coworkers. At least physically. My burns had all but vanished, just a slight bruisy feeling whenever I brushed up against anything hard to remind me I'd been injured in the first place.

I knew they would be expecting me in the office, but I couldn't quite bring myself to go back. Not just yet. Mentally . . . emotionally . . . spiritually I was far from healed. And on top of it all, I still needed a story to tell about Hakone when I arrived. Everyone always mentions the trees in autumn there. Maybe, I thought, the trees here, while lifetimes apart, might give me some inspiration.

When I first arrived in Enma-cho after my death, I hated the cherry trees perpetually in bloom. Even before I remembered what happened to me, there must have been enough of an impression of that night in their color or scent or the particular way the wind sounded through their branches that I couldn't help hating them with a visceral intensity.

Somehow, I don't know when, they started to feel like home. But I had some idea who to blame for that.

"Hisoka! I thought I might find you here."

I stiffened at the sound of his voice. Even though I'd been aching to hear it, I was afraid to turn around.

Afraid I wasn't ready to face him yet, that my injuries hadn't healed as well as Watari had assured me when he released me. I was sure he would see where I'd been and all the trouble I'd gotten myself into as soon as I turned around and looked him in the eyes. That he'd hate me when he learned the truth, and it wouldn't matter what we'd been through together. It would be as though I'd lied to him the entire time.

But it was pointless to worry. I saw none of that on Tsuzuki's face. Nothing but the simple joy of being reunited with someone he cared for. He was happy to see me. Anything more complicated than that was hidden carefully under the surface, if there was anything more.

"You knew I was back?"

"Well, I saw the souvenirs from Hakone in the conference room, so I knew you had to be around here somewhere."

What souvenirs? I almost blew my own cover by asking.

Watari.

He wasn't nearly as scatterbrained as he let on. And once again I was in that man's debt. Deeply this time. I could have wept with relief, and wondered what else he had thought to clean up for me while I was laid up in one of his beds.

"Oh. Yeah. Well, I knew you and Konoe would never let me hear the end of it if I came back from my first real solo vacation empty-handed."

Tsuzuki smiled. If he knew about my lie, the secret was safe with him. Either way, there was something comforting in slipping back inside the same behaviors that came naturally to us: the armor of indifferent sarcasm, the gentle teasing that he took so well he seemed to cultivate it.

"I'm just glad to have you back," he said. "Hope you enjoyed yourself. Trees beautiful there?"

Not as much as here, I wanted to say, and I didn't know where that came from. "Uh . . . yeah."

"You did take some time to relax, right? And, no, relaxing isn't the same as moping."

"All I _did_ was relax. It was _vacation_, Tsuzuki. Jesus. What's with the twenty questions all of a sudden?" And what was he trying to do, write my alibi for me?

"You deserve a break from this job every once in a while, Hisoka. Everyone does. Otherwise it's too easy to take all this darkness personally."

If he only knew, I thought, biting my lip and looking down at the patch of grass between us. If he only knew my "vacation" had been filled with nothing but darkness that was personal—very personal. This job was what kept me sane. It was what kept me focused on something other than the circumstances of my own death.

He had to know that. We were so much alike in that regard. And yet he continued to pretend neither of us was that way. Somehow he found it in him day after day to put on that devil-may-care mask, to lose himself in the part of the happy fool. . . .

Something inside me finally caved.

Before I could stop myself, I was wrapping my arms around his shoulders, holding him to me tight without any regard for what emotional soup of his might spill over and soak into me. I think I even surprised him. He hesitated, unsure what to do. But when I didn't immediately leap away again or bite his head off for touching me, he must have figured it was safe.

Safe. Yeah, that sums up the feeling of his arms around me pretty accurately, even if at the time I was still tender to any amount of pressure. Even that discomfort felt good. It felt real. I pressed my face to his shirt collar, and breathed in the scent of him, and mourned for what I had missed in the past two weeks. I don't know why. It was only two weeks. Was there ever a doubt in my mind in all that time that I would be coming back here?

For a moment there, standing in that field with the flames and the yato-no-kami all around me . . .

Yeah, I suppose there was.

But there was none of that now. There was nothing to fear here, either. Only pleasure. I could have been bold, gone a step further. I couldn't honestly say a part of myself wasn't curious. For the briefest of moments, I saw myself pressing my lips to his collar, to his neck, to his mouth, finally knowing what it would be like to have him kiss me as I knew he'd been wanting to for so long. . . .

But the window of opportunity passed before I could find the will. I might have felt changed by what I'd learned, and what I'd been through, but not that much. Not yet, anyway. As we slowly parted, I could sense he was very aware of the proximity, but he didn't push me. Maybe he decided that it was progress enough that I'd been the one to initiate physical contact this time. And seemingly unprovoked at that.

He laughed lightly. Such a pure sound, it made me want to cry. "What brought that on?"

He must have expected a hitch. There was the slightest edge of concern in his voice underneath the bewilderment. As if he half expected me to turn around and leave again. For good this time.

I shook my head. "No particular reason. I just missed you, is all." Would he have even believed me if I'd said I just needed to feel that he was still real?

"Me? Hisoka, it's only been two weeks."

But the amount of time wasn't relevant. Not when I'd doubted for even a second I would ever see him again.

"I know. And I had a lot of time to think." About losing him to his damned requests, and how much it terrified me to think about coming in to work one day, and finding him not there. Knowing he'll never be there again. "About—" _Us_, I almost said. "About our partnership, and how selfish I was to say those things to you—"

"Hey. It's forgotten. And maybe you were right. I should have trusted you enough to give you an explanation myself."

But that's not the point, I wanted to say. "Well, maybe. But I just wanted to tell you that I'll always be here—"

"I don't know, Hisoka. Always is a very long time."

"I-I know. But that's what I'm hoping we'll have. A long time, I mean. And when the time comes you decide you're really ready to move on, for good, I'll support you—"

"You know, you're not a very good liar."

"Will you stop talking and let me finish! I'm trying to say something important." It was bad enough I didn't think I'd get this chance, let alone swallow my pride long enough to say how I really felt, now I had to deal with his interruptions? I sighed, but inside, it was a shameless grin that was fighting to get out. Damn him for trying to make me feel better.

"Alright, maybe I'm not. But it isn't a lie when I say . . . I get it. I do, Tsuzuki, I know how much it means to you to win your freedom from this place, and what kind of partner would I be if I tried to keep you from it?"

A selfish one, no doubt about it, but could he blame me for wanting to keep him here with me? Why else would I willingly put myself through hell again and again over the past eight years, if not to hold on to him just one more day?

"I don't want you to feel like you have to stay—or do anything else, for that matter, just for my sake. You deserve to find peace just like everyone else, and . . . Well, in the end it doesn't matter what I want, does it? As long as you're happy. That's all I really want. That's why," even though it would break my heart to see you go, "I won't hold you back."

That's how much you mean to me.

Tsuzuki smiled at that. The kind of smile I didn't often get to see on his face, not laced with sadness or immature exuberance, not trying too hard. I thought this kind of seriousness would be too heavy for him this early in the morning. I expected any minute he would ruffle my hair and laugh it off, or make some hackneyed comment about sending me on vacation more often if it made me talk like that, just to lighten the air between us.

But he didn't. He just said "Thank you, Hisoka," and somehow knowing he meant it was enough.

—

I still hate Muraki, for all the right reasons. That may never change.

Yet it seems that in some way I should be grateful to him as well. In killing me, he saved me from a horrific existence no less painful than what I went through. Through his curse I escaped another, though I had to go through fire to do so. In death I found a life more meaningful than any I would have wound up with in the living world.

Yet no amount of good can forgive what he did to me; none of the happiness I experience where I am can undo the evil of his actions, or compensate for it. Immortality will not erase it. I will always carry it with me, in my memories, and engraved into my flesh in the form of a curse. An artifact of another man's sin.

But if I had the choice, would I want it any other way? Once I might have thought I knew the answer, but now I'm not so sure. I'm not sure I ever will. And in the meantime, the contradiction continues to wage its battle inside of me.

I've heard it said that God gave us memory so that we can have roses in winter.

But all I'm left with are cherry blossoms out of season.

—

_We are conscious of an animal in us which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers._  
—Henry David Thoreau

—

_. . . when the gentler part of the soul slumbers and the control of Reason is withdrawn . . ._  
_the Wild Beast in us . . ._  
_becomes rampant._  
—Plato

* * *

The quoted lines come from "Sudden Light" by the Pre-Raphaelite painter/poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. You might also recognize them from the Yami no Matsuei soundtrack:

_I have been here before,_  
_But when or how I cannot tell;_  
_I know the grass beyond the door,_  
_The sweet keen smell,_  
_The sighing sound, the lights around the shore._


	9. Tatsumi／Mibu File, Part A

**FYI**, this fifth and final part consists of viewpoints alternating between Oriya and Tatsumi. It also contains backstory based largely on this author's own speculation, which for these characters is a little like reconstructing a whole dinosaur from a jawbone. Some humoring humbly requested.

* * *

5

_I'll go walking in circles _  
_While doubting the very ground beneath me _  
_Trying to show unquestioning faith in everything _  
_Here am I, a lifetime away from you _  
_The blood of Christ, or a change of heart_

—

The roses were what captured his attention. Though a far cry from that cherry tree that bloomed evermore in his courtyard, leaves never turning and dying, he knew instantly that they were kin. Or rather, he recognized the hand that had gone into them.

Oh, perhaps his old friend didn't have such a direct hand in their creation—Oriya had never known him to be a horticulturalist of any degree—but he was behind them nonetheless. And their seemingly immortal bloom. Immortality, after all, had been his obsession.

As sure as mortality had been his trade.

"You take milk and sugar in your coffee?"

"Just black these days, I'm afraid."

"That's right. I forgot."

He detected a tone of sullenness in those words that was completely unjustified. If his memory served him correct, she hadn't been so different once upon a time. A studious girl who liked her afternoon tea cloudy with milk, and her late-night coffee as naked as the day it was born. Quite the opposite of himself.

Until recently.

The arrangement in the center of the table spoke of the new year: Deep, garnet red next to blinding white. Grandifloras as wide as his outstretched palm. Petals so velvet-soft he didn't have to touch them to feel their fur. A perfume floated off the blooms and lazed in the air like incense smoke, the barest movement causing it to stir and warm the nostrils all over again. Fresh as newly-washed linens, and dark as spiced wine. He did not see the slightest trace of mildew, blackspot, or even the darkening, wrinkling of age that so often creeps along the outer petals even as the inner are still unfolding.

_And such as these, in the dead middle of winter. . . ._

"They're his. If that's what you're wondering."

She set the coffee down in front of him, the fine porcelain cup and saucer rattling cleanly against one another as they settled on the table. Keeping her own in hand, she settled herself down at the opposite end of the table.

Her legs folded under her as easily as a spider's. How frail she had become since they had last spoken in person. From illness, or simply working herself too hard? Long nights in the lab, hours on the phone, fighting as always against the ceaseless, careless march of time?

"I had others, more traditional varieties, but they've all died on me over the years, no matter what I tried. Somehow these ones only get stronger. I couldn't kill them if I wanted to. I guess that's the way it usually works, isn't it?"

Or perhaps they were responsible for her other plants' deaths, Oriya wanted to say. Toxic, to the core, like the one in whose memory they had been crafted. But he saw no need to voice what she no doubt suspected herself.

—

"I don't believe he's dead, Oriya."

He looked up at her, his gaze cutting sharp through the delicate gauze of steam rising from her cup. "It's been too long. You said yourself, he would have found a way to get word to us if he could—"

"And when was the last time _you_ heard from him? More than a cryptic apology or an unsigned package, that is."

He would not answer her that. He could not, without revealing too much.

He raised his cup. The coffee was a black hole inside the bone-white lip. He had to say, he much preferred tea. "Absence of evidence is not evidence. I should think I need not remind you of that."

"Ah, the old Russell's teapot defense." She smiled to herself, a joke he was not privy to. "You've been in the old capital too long, Oriya. You're starting to sound like a poet."

"And you're sounding more and more like him."

It was the wrong thing to say. Her frosty silence told him as much if nothing else did. Even that echoed shades of Muraki Kazutaka.

Sakuraiji Ukyo, their old school friend, and his old friend's fiancée. Once upon a time. It seemed she had followed their mutual friend in all things: medical school, genetic manipulation, a taste for roses and weak, black coffee. . . .

And now even the way she smiled to herself as though to say she could not possibly expect Oriya to understand. He recognized in her Muraki's relentless drive to _know_, to not rest until he had solved whatever problem was plaguing him. Except where Muraki had always been pessimistic about the fragility of human life, she had managed to hold stubbornly to her faith in its tenacity. Even the clouds that crossed her youthful features now would not stay long.

But this new frailness. . . .

That was what worried Oriya, if anything did. You've followed in his footsteps your entire adult life, he wanted to tell her. Do not follow him in this.

If he knew his old friend at all, he knew the last thing Muraki would have wanted was for whatever darkness that had haunted his life to taint _her_ with its malignancy. Muraki had good reason to keep his distance, if he still lived. Just take his silence as I have, Oriya wanted to but dared not say: his last act of kindness toward the two of us.

The roses watched Oriya as he sipped his coffee. The roses she had bred especially for him—for her Kazutaka. The color to his specifications, the longevity to his desire. She had perfected immortality where their old friend had failed.

But to what gain?

—

When I was a child, a friend of my father's gave him a cricket in a cage.

It was all the rage in those days to have one in one's home: as a bringer of good fortune, and a living song that could be enjoyed at any time of day.

But Father was a busy man, so he gave it to me to care for. He knew I enjoyed an intellectual challenge—I was always hovering around the top of my class—and he thought a pet would make a fine compliment to my studies.

So I eagerly hoarded any and all books I could find on the care and feeding of crickets. I gave it scraps from the kitchen. I monitored its movements, the amount of sunlight it was exposed to, the varieties of sounds it made. . . .

But in the end, it died all the same. Without ever having left that cage.

—

Immortality is a much misunderstood thing. To those who covet it, it is the answer to every question—an escape from the uncertainty and pain of death. It is comfort to the man whose life's work isn't done—to the woman who mourns a husband whose corpse she never sees, and prays for her children's sake that there is something better than this life somewhere on the other side of the veil, somewhere they will never have to experience loss or struggle or fear.

But to those of us who possess it—

I don't believe there is a single one of us who would not trade it for the blissful nothingness of the final grave. It is only our sense of responsibility that keeps us going, reminds us that there are too many who would lose by our own selfish gain. It is for the sake of others that we persist. Some of those others we hardly know, or know not at all; but we feel called to duty nonetheless, by our shared humanity if nothing else.

As for the rest, the blessedly few—

We would gladly put aside our own troubles to take from them their burdens, carry that heavy load on our own shoulders, not out of altruism, but out of something even less rational, even more at odds with our most fundamental, survivalist nature:

Love.

I was a timid inductee in the world of the shinigami when I met Tsuzuki. Having just had the scales peeled from my eyes by my own death, awakening to realize everything I thought I knew about the universe around me was flawed and incomplete, I was desperate for direction, and cleaved to the first person to show it to me.

Though we were paired together by our division chief with no personal say in the matter, Tsuzuki took me under his wing as though being saddled with me had been the answer to his prayers. Though he was only a few years younger than I had been when he died, his decade and a half of experience over me made him an obvious choice of mentor.

Yet there was a childlike ease to his character as well, that had been taken from me at an early age. If I ever had it to begin with. Perhaps the incongruous magnitude of his enthusiasm should have been a sign to me that there was turmoil lurking just beneath his calm surface, but that is an observation which can only come with hindsight. At the time, there was nothing to suggest to me that our working relationship would be anything but fruitful for many years to come, and that I might find in him the kind of peer and friend I had never truly known in my brief life of twenty-nine years.

Tsuzuki was my first and only official partner in this place. In the Land of the Dead, it seems we may not age and wither, but after three months with him, our partnership was deader, as the saying goes, than a doornail.

When the storm was over and the dust had settled, they made me secretary to the chief of the Summons Division, and there I've been ever since, preparing budgets for approval, awarding allowances, making travel arrangements for my peers on assignment. And fielding whatever complaints about their behavior Summons might receive from other departments. I would say it was a living, if I were. Living, that is.

But the difference is a mere matter of semantics. Alive or dead, my existence follows the same cycle it always has: Work. Sleep. Rise before the sun. Parcel out blame as if it were mail to be sorted into the appropriate cubbyholes.

Persist, somehow, in the shadows.

In this cage equal parts fate and my own making.

—

My father married above his station. That was the beginning of my troubles.

He came from a line of unremarkable Tatsumis, but had managed to elevate himself above their mediocrity and make a name for himself as a small-businessman. In his later years, he was rather fond of drink and gambling; but when he met my mother, he was a promising entrepreneur. No doubt part of what motivated him to this early success was a desire to win over my mother's parents, who—as she was always quick to remind us in her darkest boughts of despair—were descended from samurai nobility.

I'm not privy to exactly what motives each party had in sealing the arrangement, though I suspect some eagerness on my grandparents' part to marry Mother off. She had older siblings, and in those days it would have been unseemly for her to marry before the eldest daughter. I cannot be sure, having never known Mother's side of the family except by hearsay, if there were hints even then of the drastic mood swings which would later incapacitate her for days at a time, or if those were merely a product of a tattered marriage to a man more than a decade her senior and a household of hungry children to look after. I do wonder if, to Mother's family, despite his low birth, Father's interest was welcomed as precisely the opportunity they were waiting for. Or if there were more expedient circumstances demanding their marriage be made official—some more natural reason for the distance they kept forever after between themselves and their youngest daughter. Mother was still not yet eighteen, after all, when I was born.

Which was not to say my parents were not wholly in love. I have every reason to believe that in the early years of their marriage, and certainly during their courtship, they fully believed they were.

But by the time my youngest sister entered the world, reality had made itself quite at home in our small suburban household. Whether it was Father's string of failed ventures that led to Mother's ultimate state of despair, or her temper that contributed to Father's unhealthy financial practices, I cannot say, but they fed one another's misery until that carriage barreling toward disaster had enough momentum to carry itself.

—

We did not want for much in the early years. I do remember that. We lived simply, but we had nice things. There were always fresh flowers and porcelain figurines in the alcove, and we never starved. We even had a cat, a bobtailed rascal with a black mustache that made him look like Natsume Soseki.

That was when Father's business was doing well. That was before Manchuria. And a string of poor decisions that only succeeded in revealing how fragile our semblance of peace truly was.

No. That is not entirely fair. Our hard times started even before the Mukden Incident. Business was booming under the nationalistic optimism that had swept in with the Showa emperor—for everyone, it seemed, but our little household. At that same time, Father moved us to the the bustling urban heart of Tokyo in the hopes his luck in business would improve, but no number of pet crickets would have been enough to lift him out of his bad habits. Nothing would have, short of changing the man he was.

I shan't say that Mother never tried. With screamed empty threats of flight or infidelity and broken dishes. With ruined suppers and long depressive spells punctuated by bouts of drinking and the occasional violent outburst that prompted me to shuttle my sisters out of the room with covered ears, and Father to shuttle himself from the house for the nearest mah-jongg club.

It was our parents' war. My sisters and I did not start it, but we had no choice but to be caught in the middle of it. Whatever room our parents found themselves both in at the same time became a battlefield, though the righteous cause of the day may vary.

_What man in his right mind is ever going to make Sachie his wife with a miserable failure like you as a father-in-law? _

Or, _if you want Chiemi to show up for school in old rags like a common tramp, on your head be it! _

Or—that beloved classic—_maybe your son wouldn't need glasses just to see his hand in front of his face if we could afford a proper electric light to study by!_

It always came down to an explosive combination of money and pride. Any simple observation could bring on a volley of abuse and accusation. The slightest provocation could turn dinner into an exercise in guilt-heaping. Mother kept ready just for such occasions a mental list of every luxury she had left behind so she could be in her living hell. "If you truly loved me" began every treaty du jour that our father rushed off without ever signing.

And when the dust settled in the wake of their momentary ceasefire, it was I who stepped up to retake control of the household. Right the overturned tables, clear away the broken vase of flowers before anyone could cut him- or herself on the jagged edges. Fix Mother another drink to calm her nerves, and make sure dinner was on the stove.

It was not so much that I _wanted_ to be the one to shoulder her burden, only . . .

Who else would? My two younger sisters? They at least deserved some semblance of the childhood I'd barely had. And I always did feel a certain level of responsibility for the anguish my mother had already suffered. I watched it slowly drive her into an early middle age. If I could not cure the source of her ailment, I could at very least salve her wounds. And I was her son, after all, and eldest child. It was, if nothing else, my sacred duty.

As soon as I was able, I set myself to managing the household finances. It was a woman's job, but between Father's robbing of Mother's allowance to pay off his bar tabs and gambling debts, and my sisters soon spending their spare time after school in the factories just to put food on the table, I was the natural choice for the role of family accountant.

I must admit, I took to it rather naturally. I enjoyed mathematics; its concrete rules and predictable outcomes were a queer sort of comfort to me. The economy of daily existence was a much easier thing to endure when it could be broken down into units and formulas that did not fluctuate with moods.

Something that could not, on the other hand, be said for human dynamics. The less time I spent trying to work out Father's motivations or solve the problem of Mother's melancholia, the saner I, and vicariously the household, remained, for it meant less time dwelling on the unpleasant reality of our circumstances. Each night of beef stew and quiet, contented stomachs became a victory. The fewer of the fine kimono left to her by her family that Mother had to sell to feed my sisters and me, and the fewer nights we children had to work through without sleep to make the debt-collectors go away happy, the more peaceful our world remained for it for another day.

I liked to believe Father was, in his own way, proud of me. At least I know my hard work did not go unnoticed.

He never told me as much to my face, but his actions spoke volumes where he could not. When he recommended me to my first employer, I was forced grudgingly to accept what I could never hope to see in writing: that I had done well by him, if only well enough to even out the damage he had caused.

I will not pretend that I was immediately grateful. Whatever few and far-between acts of kindness my father showed his family, his behavior the remainder of the time ensured the scales were forever tipped against his favor.

—

The Kokakurou stood on the bank of the Shirakawa like a relic from another time.

While the rest of the country allowed itself to be swept along in the parade of time and progress, exchanging wooden frames and papered doors for steel and glass, the Kokakurou and its neighbors in the old parts of the old capital stubbornly refused to budge. Not that they could be easily moved; history weighed so greatly down upon them. They stood out in an era of functional monotony, seduced the eye and coaxed out from deep within an upswell of nostalgia for a more elegant time, like spring sunlight calling forth blossoms from lifeless branches.

He knew better than to be fooled. Though he'd learned to embrace the styles and habits of those times himself, he knew better than to believe they had been better. More elegant, perhaps, but also brutal, and dark.

Granted, of course, it had been a long time since the girls who worked in establishments like theirs were pressed into their service unwillingly. With their history and immaculate reputation—well, with their clientele and what said clientele could afford, was a more accurate way of putting it—they were able to recruit the best, the most beautiful, the most talented. Women who entered this business because they enjoyed it—or, at least, were honest with themselves about where their skills lay.

It had not always been that way. Once upon a time the illustrious Kokakurou's workforce had consisted of the wives of men who preferred to run away from their debts; or their unfortunate daughters, raised in the lifestyle from such an early age they never knew there was any other kind of life outside the barred walls of their floating world.

In other parts of Kyoto, and other cities scattered across Japan and the rest of the globe, things were still much that way. Only now immigrants had replaced destitute wives, illegals who were rarely missed by distant relations. You might have to scratch beneath the surface of neon lights and pulsating music to see the truth, but not very far. Though his place of business was clearly more ethical and law-abiding, Oriya would not justify what he did, no more than he could condone those less reputable establishments. He harbored no delusions that this was an honorable or glamorous way of life for anyone, whether it be forced or voluntary.

And yet . . .

It _did_ have history.

"You do your employees a disservice. You know that they consider themselves masters of a long-lost art."

This was an age-old rebuke between them. Muraki would say it as he casually sipped his tea, as if he were merely correcting Oriya on his translation of a Classical poem.

He would say it as if he had gained that little gem of insight after hundreds of hours of careful observation and interviews with the girls, as though they were the subjects for some clinical trial he was conducting. As though it were sheer, self-evident pride that kept the old building standing after all these centuries.

When Oriya knew the Kokakurou didn't stand proud at all.

It crouched. It waited till the cover of night, then it spread its legs.

"I know," he would say nonetheless, occupying himself with the imperfections in the cup beneath the tips of his fingers as he slowly turned it round and round.

"And yet you continue to condescend to them, as though they were merely—"

"Whores?" He had scoffed. "What do you think a _tayuu_ is, Muraki? Under all that fancy wrapping."

Muraki had not answered right away. He allowed time for a slow grin to develop, and for Oriya to guess what he was going to say before he said it.

"If that was how you felt about this business all along, why ever did you get into it?"

—

He snapped the cellphone shut. As he put it back in his pocket, he pulled out the pack of cigarettes purchased from the convenience store down the street. Nasty things, literally more distasteful than the pipe and spiced blend of tobacco he had left back in Kyoto; but that would have seemed unforgiveably out of place and time here, as out of place and time as silk robes and geta. It occupied a separate realm.

Besides, he needed to feel this particular burn in his lungs right now.

Oh, everything was fine back at the Kokakurou, his madam had called to inform him. When was it not? They never lacked for business. Especially now, at the start of the new year: old acquaintances being rekindled, new experiences tried. A regular customer, a rather esteemed client, had left a generous token of his thanks, along with the appropriate numbers of a few new parties interested in revisiting the establishment at a future date, having thoroughly enjoyed the services.

One of the girls had had to get an abortion, but she was fine now and swore it would not happen again. The madam insisted she did not want Oriya's financial compensation for the procedure, but he knew the girl would accept it just as he was offering, as part of the job. Or else the matter would not have been brought to his attention in the first place. He saw right through the madam's requisite assertion that she "had not wished to trouble you with the matter on your holiday." It was, after all, the part she had to play.

They all had their parts to play.

Whether they came to those roles willingly, like his clients. Like the girl who understood the hazards of the job and had no qualms rectifying them. Or whether they filled their roles kicking and screaming.

As he had gone to his inheritance.

It often occurred to Oriya that, if his father had not gone to such an early grave, he would now be living a very different life. He might never have returned to Kyoto, taken over the Kokakurou. And how many things would have played out differently if he had not?

How many people would still be alive if Muraki had not followed him there?

Would their friendship be any different for it?

These were questions for which there were no answers. He could not go back in time, warn himself of what his best friend would become. Warn himself of what _he_ would become. It was useless to dwell on hypotheticals, just as it was somehow as natural as breathing.

He remembered now why he hated cigarettes. They tasted like Muraki.

He exhaled, long and steady, but it would not get that taste out of his mouth and the back of his nostrils. He ground the butt into the dirt with the toe of his sneaker. Then, remembering where he was, bent and plucked it from the ground to dispose of properly.

Ukyo's roses watched him from where they stood leaning against the fence, a buffer between him and the soulless vista of suburban Tokyo sprawl. A living brocade of cream and gold and scarlet against a background of dark green silk, as vibrant as any _tayuu_ in all her finery, even in this cold mid-winter drizzle. He should have been proud of the artistry that had gone into them—into their _design_, not just their care: the intelligence and dedication which showed in every perfectly formed petal, down to its basest molecular level.

Showed her devotion to the one they both loved in equal shares, despite what they both knew was best for them.

—

By the early 1930s, most of Asakusa had recovered from the Great Kanto Earthquake. Vast green expanses of new parks covered the old washed-out fields, and sidewalks and brick facades were cluttered with signboards and posters for the latest motion pictures, trendy cafes, and boutiques imported from all over the world.

Yoshiwara, the old pleasure quarter of the city, where we lived, was a little slower to catch up. Some of the wooden structures built during the Restoration, which the earthquake had somehow left standing, leaned dangerously as though a stiff wind might topple them over at any time. The cheaper housing meant dirty kids running rampant in the streets, as families in situations even worse than ours moved into the neighborhood. To my sisters and myself, it was home. We knew how to make due with little. And how to spot a con man and give him a wide berth. We had raised one another to be industrious, so our small house was never allowed to look rundown. Nor was anything wasted. Chiemi was even something of a magician when it came to bringing new life into old tatami, saving us a small fortune on replacements.

But as Mother was wont to remind us, in far more creative words, we were living in the slums. Even in squalor she had expensive tastes, as if she had been conditioned for them in the womb. So where Father saw an opportunity for survival, she saw continued insult to her character.

I must confess to taking after her in this regard. As comfortable as I may have felt when alone with my books in my own home, I was ashamed that any of my peers might discover just how deeply in debt my family was, and invented elaborate stories to prevent that from happening throughout my school years. Perhaps even more than my mother, I was fastidious about my outward appearance. I took on extra jobs and skipped meals just to be able to buy myself Western-style suits, which I then had to learn to tailor myself. I was determined to make the Tatsumi name synonymous with dedication, efficiency, and sobriety—everything my father had not. I presented those virtues with my person daily, in fine wool and starched shirts, in impeccable grooming and shoes polished nightly. Meanwhile, glasses and a well-set smile allowed me to mask any sign of frailty, or, indeed, human emotion from the public.

At my employer's urging—and with the help of a generous loan—I was even able to achieve my dream of attending university. Those few years I spent honing my mind were the most fulfilling of my life, though in retrospect I often wonder how I managed to fit my work, studies, and care of the household all into my daily schedule. I thought once that those days would last forever. But when they were over, it seemed as though they had passed in the blink of an eye.

—

It was during that time that I, in my youthful innocence, believed I had found the love of my life.

Suzuran was her name, Lily-of-the-Valley. Though I'm certain it was not the name she had been born with. She was . . . well, shall we just say, a self-employed small-businesswoman.

I was twenty when we met. She was in her later twenties, perhaps thirty; I never asked. It was the spring of 1936, and I was commuting to university daily. My mind was wide open to all sorts of new and exotic ideas. And experiences. And despite what her name might suggest, there was nothing about her that was humble, plain, or easy to overlook.

She was a modern girl through and through. Though a silk kimono and kanazashi would have done her no injustice, she insisted the old fashions of the Edo period and the floating world were dead. She kept up on the latest motion pictures from America, taxi-danced at the Parisian-style dance halls, and modeled her looks after the Wrays and Harlows of that new and glamorous world. Hair in curls, cigarillo between fingers, and a haughty, husky slur to match her bedroom eyes. A silhouette-hugging gown and one bare white shoulder peeking out from beneath a bulky fur given her by one of her many "boys."

She would use that word as though there should never be any doubt in my mind I was not one of them, though I suppose the only difference between us was what we could each afford to pay. Ours may have been an intellectual relationship at its core, mine and Suzuran's, from the moment we met to the point sometime during the war we drifted wordlessly apart; she had a fiercely independent mind, and far less compunction than myself in voicing her opinions on the matters of the day, especially where they concerned the liberation of women. I felt as though I could tell her anything, confess all my troubles, and my words would be swallowed up in her eyes like whispers into a well, never to resurface.

But it was not a friendship wholly free of desire either, nor was it sexless. Sometimes she would charge me for the pleasure of her company; nothing unreasonable for services rendered. At others, if the mood so took her, she was caught up on rent, or if our schedules left only enough time for something playfully hurried, I was . . . what? A diversion for her, I suppose. An innocent, for a change of pace. A pawn in the game of life, like herself, running as fast as he could just to stay in the same place. Not someone who could afford to buy her fur coats for her trouble, that was certain.

Even on those occasions, however, I could never quite bring myself to think of her as a professional, a lady of the evening—as anything other than my trusted confidante. I would tend to see her toward the beginning of her day—around my lunch breaks or in the early afternoon—and counted myself privileged that I was allowed a glimpse of who she was, who she really was, before the costumes and the mask went on.

Yet behind her rouge and painted smile, her slinky Western ensembles and Chinese dresses, I saw no trace of the quiet suffering I was always attempting to hide behind my own veneer. To my younger self, just coming into my manhood, there was a confidence, a worldly wisdom about her that I found lacking in myself. No matter to me that that worldliness must have come at a price dealt repeatedly by my own sex. I envied and adored her all the more for it, for to me she seemed free.

—

"You could always leave," Suzuran said. "If you wanted to. No one could blame you if you did."

She was right, after a sort. Society would not judge me harshly, when so many of my generation had already forsaken their parents.

But _I_ would know what I had done. I would have abandoned my sisters, who had already shouldered so much more of the burden than they deserved; I could not begrudge them what liberation they had found in careers and friendships outside the house. And Mother would curse my name until the day I died if I ever left her.

Only Father would congratulate me if I actually managed to escape, for succeeding where he had failed for so long.

"And you would run away with me?" Of course, the chances of that happening were less than none. I think I smiled as I shook my head. "No. I couldn't do that to her. As tempting as it may be. I would never be able to live with myself if something happened to her because I took the selfish route."

"And it isn't selfish of her to hold you back from seeking your own happiness?"

She must not have expected an answer to that one; nor did I have one to give her.

"Anyway, doesn't she have other family to fall back on?"

Not that I knew of. "Her parents are long dead. I think. I doubt any of her siblings would want anything to do with her. They have families of their own to support."

I doubted some of them even remembered their youngest sister. Or else they conveniently forgot her existence. From the time I was born, it was Father's family that I had any sort of contact with. The kind uncle who ruffled my hair and slipped me candy when I called on Father at his place of business. The aunt who popped in only long enough to drop off some fruit from her garden, glancing skittishly around like a stray cat, ready to bolt at the first sign of our mother. The grandmother who bounced me on her knee in the shadiest recesses of my memory, who one year simply disappeared and was never mentioned again.

"I thought you said she came from nobility."

"She did," I told her. "But my mother married for love, and look how far that got her."

I looked up at her, expecting a rebuttal. Or at very least some witty retort. Instead, the tobacco smoke lazily unfurled from between her lax, naked lips like a living thing. Even without her makeup, the shape of her stare and the alluring pout of her lips had a natural, inscrutable aloofness to them. Finding them suddenly turned on me, I began to panic.

Before I could say a word, she stubbed out her cigarillo, and in a second was kneeling behind my shoulders, her tiny hands heavy and warm on each one.

As with every time we touched, the urge to flee rose up on instinct. I willed myself to relax as she massaged my shoulders in that way she thought was comforting to me. A voice inside said it would be rude to reject her kindness. And, after all, why would I continue to call on her if I did not like how she made me feel? Slowly I felt the muscles untense and the blood flow back into them. I could taste the cloves on her smoke as she exhaled by my ear, and let my eyes fall closed in surrender.

Such was the almost magical sway she held over me. My worldly problems, though never entirely forgotten, seemed suddenly quite minuscule in her hands—like the buildings of some town far in the distance, too far away to matter. Against my will, they faded further out of my reach, and it shamed me to realize I was happy to see them go.

"You are not your parents, Seiichirou," she said as her hands slowed and finally came to a stop where my shoulders met my spine, like a train pulling into the station. "I can tell, because you're too damn tense for your own good."

She gave me that wry smile of hers that said she already knew I knew that. Just as she knew nothing she said would change the way I was.

I leaned in, compelled by a jealous urge to capture those wry lips for my own. Pretend for a few moments that I was the only one who had ever tasted them. And she melted into my kiss with an ease that even my young, naïve self could not pretend was the result of anything but long practice. She put her small white hands on the fronts of my shoulders, and lifted herself into my lap as lightly as if she were a cloud.

That was how she always felt when I folded my arms about her—as though that solid body were a mere illusion, which would evaporate if I only pressed too hard. I should have given her more credit. She was more solid in that world than I was.

—

"I can't help feeling he's going to do something terrible."

The sounds of their eating continued uninterrupted even as she said this. Only if one was looking for it—as he was—would one notice the subtle signs, the unconscious gestures betraying her anxiety. The uncomfortable pull of her lips that was almost but never quite a grimace as she fought with herself over whether, not what, to say. The briefest of moments when her fingers left her chopsticks to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

She did not look up at him, though his gaze was waiting to meet hers. Perhaps because it was ready to meet hers.

"Something terrible." Oriya turned the words over as if to himself. "As in, something different from anything else he's done?"

The unspoken challenge hovered between them as the awkward play of picking food up but never eating it continued. It dared her to refute him. He should have known she would not disappoint.

"You don't know him like I do."

"Oh, I think I know him quite well enough—"

"You don't know how he was before Saki," Ukyo said, these words harder than the others. Bold-faced, underlined. Undeniably true. "You don't know how he just changed overnight."

But you do? he wanted so badly to ask her. You know what it was that turned my best friend into a monster? You can tell me with absolute certainty what event, or what gene, is responsible for making him what he's become?

Because how nice it would be to have the answer. From a medical professional, no less. To know it wasn't his fault, it never was. To know there was never anything he could have done.

"I just need you to do one thing for me, Oriya. If you still value our friendship."

"And you think I have that kind of power over him?" _If I had, don't you think I would have exercised it before?_

"Just one thing," Ukyo insisted. As if it really were such a small little thing. "Save him from himself."

"Why me?"

"Because. God knows you love him more than I ever could."

—

That was the last time they had seen each other, almost two years ago. Months before Muraki revealed his final plan to Oriya, and then disappeared.

Oriya had not agreed. He had promised nothing. Yet he had still failed her in this one thing.

_Save him from himself. Just this one thing._

How had she known? Was it an old betrothed's intuition that sent that premonitory chill up her spine?

Or was she really as kindred a spirit to him as she claimed?

Is that why falling was so god-damned easy? he wondered as he slid back inside the house.

—

I did not run away, though god knows I wanted to.

As a real possibility, however, it never crossed my mind. Running away from one's duties was the action of a coward. It was the action of a man like my father.

Certainly, if I were honest, I understood why sometimes he only dared sneak back in the dead of the night, and other times did not set foot inside the house for days, if not weeks on end. Mother's mood swings had grown inexorably worse since we moved to Yoshiwara. Frustration with her surroundings did not help to mend the distance growing between her and Father. If anything, it had expanded from a mere strait to a gulf.

On top of which, he must have realized his children were able to take care of themselves—had been taking care of themselves since they'd learned to boil rice—and that he had become as much a stranger to them as our mother had to him. What, honestly, was left for him in that house?

And yet.

I could excuse his behavior all I wanted, but it would not change what he was: a failure. A breaker of vows. A dastardly do-nothing of a father and a husband.

It shames me somewhat to admit that I hated him for it, though it shames me perhaps less than it should.

We are all, I suppose, at one point in our lives or another, slaves to feelings we cannot control, and that hatred was mine. Mother, for her part, hadn't even the will power to lift herself out of her despair. Anger was for her a crutch at best; it did nothing to mend the problem.

And it sickened me—oh, how it sickened me that the tiny house we shared would begin to reek of mildew and rotting onions and whatever cheap liquor she could find to drown her sorrows in if I were away on business for even a few days. She was a grown woman, albeit grown up from a spoiled girl, yet it was myself and my poor sisters who worked ourselves ragged for her sake, every free waking moment we were able, from the very moment we had become able. While I was working so hard toward my own education and future career, I was at the same time saddled with the care of this miserable woman, who either could not see or else refused to acknowledge how much of themselves her children had sacrificed for her.

Did she think it was what she deserved? I asked myself that question so many times.

And if so, what did _we_ deserve? Were her own children due any happiness of their own? Or was even that too presumptuous of us? Were we no more than penance for a slap-dash marriage, forced to suffer our own existence because our parents refused to acknowledge what should have been, what was by rights, _their_ burden?

For all I tried to reason one out, there was no answer to be found. Nor could I see a way out of my prison. There were evenings spent with my coworkers at a restaurant close to the office, that I wished I could crawl down inside of my empty glass and emerge through the other side in a world where I had no parents, no filial obligation, no strife—some perverse fantasy inside my head where right was left and they had both died long ago, leaving me not one yen of wealth nor debt. I must have been a bore to everyone around me, unable even to shake my thoughts from the stagnant home life that awaited me at the end of the evening. No one was ever anything but polite in my company, but I am sure I exuded my bitterness like a foul odor. You would not know it to look at my smiling face, but come within arm's reach and you would surely see the pathetic young man behind the facade.

The young man who hated his mother. Hated her because, despite it all, I could not leave her if I wanted to. It was simply what I was programmed to do. And I blamed her for it.

How selfish I was. Little did I know that blame was a luxury I could not afford. Blinded by resentment for what my life had become, I was unaware what enemies my mother had made for herself. I had no idea anyone might actually wish her harm, least of all herself.

—

She was wearing her wedding kimono when I found her. As if she needed anything else to tell the world what had started her down the road to this.

Blood bloomed like a rose from under the blade of the kitchen knife lodged in her body. A dark red rose, against the unnatural whiteness of her body.

It seemed to be unfolding still as I stood in the doorway, too stunned to do anything but stare, while a policeman tried needlessly to bar my entrance.

Chiemi saw me then.

She had been crying. Echoes of it wavered in her voice despite her best efforts. "I only came to take her shopping with me. Just like every Wednesday. I swear, Seiichirou, I just—"

Then the reality of it must have caught up with her. She caught a sob in the cup of her hand, as though afraid it might escape and scurry under the walls. "She's _dead!_ Oh _God!_ What are we supposed to do?"

I had no answer for her. I, her big brother, the rock and brain of the household, had no solution to this problem.

Like a puppet, I slipped away from the officer and went to kneel at Mother's side. It was as though someone else were moving the paddles—as though the room was a stage before me, myself and my sister and the policemen—all wooden dolls, the lot of us, shifted around our tableau by invisible hands, just trying to do what we thought was correct, what our duty demanded.

I remember thinking—wishing—someone would wake me, and I would find myself back in my office, as though I had never left. I would finish my filing for the day and walk home as I always did, only this time at the end of it I would find Mother flipping through her magazines, or listening to the radio from her futon. Sullen, ignoring her children, but blinking. Alive.

Not like this, so still, so white in her formal kimono—a pale swastika on the tatami. I tried to remember how she had looked in life—the color of her cheeks, the rising of her chest for a sigh when I left her that very morning—but I could not. Those were things I'd given up noticing long ago, if I ever had. I wanted to reach out and touch her, assure myself that she was really dead, but I could not move an inch and my hands curled into fists in my trousers. What would it accomplish? I could not stop that spot of blood from spreading, let alone return it to her body.

I had hardly touched her in life; what right had I to start now?

—

"You just found her like this?"

My sister had begun to pace the room. Her arms wrapped tightly about her middle, as if the pressure on her diaphragm might keep the tears inside just long enough for the police to finish their work and leave us. I expected her blame at any moment. _Where were you when she needed you? You should have caught this. You should have been there to stop it. You were her oldest—her son!_

But she only turned her red-rimmed eyes toward me, let out a rattling breath. "_Why_, Seiichirou? I thought we were doing well. I thought she was finally—"

Happy? Neither of us could bring ourselves to finish that lie. It only proved how deeply in denial we had been.

"I'll make arrangements." I'll fix this, I wanted to say, from habit, but there was nothing to fix. Despite the terror I felt inside, a strange calm seemed to have come over me. Perhaps it was the futility of it all—the knowledge that, this time, nothing I did would have any effect.

Or maybe it was just the kind of man I was.

"One of us has to tell Father—"

"Forget it. He won't be coming back. We don't owe that man anything anymore."

"What do you mean?"

My sister's lips just moved wordlessly, as though trying to suck back in what she had already let slip.

"Are you saying he already knows about this?" When I had had to find out this way?

"Forget I said anything. We have enough to concern ourselves with right now—"

"Damn it, Chiemi, I think I have a right to know if our father was here!"

She let out her breath all in a rush. She would not meet my eyes.

"All right. I saw him as I was coming up the street. He was going the other way, in a hurry. I don't think he even recognized me—"

I was on my feet before she could utter another word. Shock turned to rage inside me, boiling up with my grief in a violent chemical reaction. Never before had I felt an urge to inflict harm on another human being, but I did then. It frightened me. I was unsure how far it could lead me, if I allowed it to. If I lost control of it. Nor was I sure at that moment that I wanted to control it.

Chiemi must have read my mind. She was at my side in a heartbeat, gripping my shoulders so tight I would have bruises beneath my shirt. "It's not what you're thinking, I saw his face, Seiichi—he was _terrified_—"

"Of course he was! Just who do you think is responsible for this?"

"She did it to herself. You _know_ she did—"

"He's the one to blame, it doesn't matter if he held the knife or not. He murdered her!"

"He didn't murder anyone," she said to the policemen around us, who had begun to stare.

"Why are you defending him? He's been stealing from her for years! She must have finally had enough, she must have finally stood up to him. He had the motive, the opportunity—he's a drunkard and a coward, and who can predict what garbage like that will do when confronted. He's always hated her. It was no secret he ruined her life; he had to take even that from her, too? What are you all still doing standing around? You should be out there arresting the bastard!"

The slap was unexpected. My sisters had never raised a hand against me. No one had ever raised a hand against anyone in our family, except our mother against our father. The sting of the edges of my glasses cutting into my skin startled me like a plunge into icy water. I stared at my sister in shock, and glimpsed in her eyes for an instant a hatred to which I had never been subject before, yet knew at once had been there all along.

The next moment, it had vanished, replaced by disbelief for what she had done.

"Seiichirou. . . ." It squeezed out of her in a whisper, the only word she seemed to trust herself to speak. At once an apology and an admonition, and a plea for the sympathy one sibling deserved from another.

But I could not let it go.

"She wouldn't take her own life." In my mind, Father had already been tried and found guilty, one way or another. He'd led her to this point, whatever had ultimately transpired in that living room. She could not have gotten there alone. "She wouldn't do this to us."

"She did."

I knew she was right, of course. Just as I knew deep in my soul who was really to blame. Only I did not want to believe it.

—

About the next few years, there's not much to say.

—

Nor will I trouble you at length with the details of my own death.

You can read all about the horror of that night in the newspaper archives, in the stories of survivors: how the city was transformed in a matter of minutes into a hell on earth.

Suffice it to say I suffered, but not for very long.

—

I awoke in a strange bed, the cherry trees in full bloom outside my window.

My first thought was that I had somehow survived that night and slept the month away in a hospital. The new buds on the branches had been closed tight against the March chill that night when I went to bed. Though my memory was hazy, somehow I remembered that much.

But as consciousness returned to me, seemingly in exponential leaps, so grew my certainty that I was dead, though how I had come to that conclusion I could not say. Perhaps it was the inexplicable lightness of my body, quite a new experience after the last few, dragging years of my life. Or something in the charge of the air, the lack of a hospital smell in what was quite clearly an infirmary.

More likely it was the utter lack of wounds staring back at me when I turned my hands over in my lap. I was expecting burns, though why remained a mystery to me at that time. The answers seemed to be in a part of my brain to which my access had been shut off, much to my frustration.

The door opened, and a man appeared in the Western suit and fedora that was common among men of my time.

The effect that I suppose was meant to calm me I found unsettling.

"Where am I?" I asked him.

He sighed and removed his hat. Not so much in condolence as weariness. He must have had to explain this very same situation dozens of times, and I was just one more charge whose reaction to the most dire news imaginable he could never be wholly prepared for.

"Mr Tatsumi," he began, "this might come as something of a shock to you—"

"But I'm dead?" He seemed surprised by my matter-of-fact tone. But how else was I supposed to take it? It was a fact I could not change. "I have to admit, I didn't expect it to be like . . . this. To be conscious."

My grim reaper let slip a sly smile at that, relaxing his tense frame. "You and everyone else. I guess I can skip the part where I try to convince you this isn't some sort of practical joke.

"But all joking aside, I should inform you before we get too ahead of ourselves that this isn't Heaven. Nor is it Hell. More like . . . the place in between them and the living, if that makes it easier to process.

"You're in Meifu, Mr Tatsumi, the Land of the Dead. Or, if you prefer, old Yomi. Specifically, we're in Enma-cho, the bureaucratic hub and where all the action generally happens. Your soul has already been judged by King Enma, and sent here to be reinstated in a physical body as a shinigami, a servant of King Enma's will within his Ministry of the Dead. It's a great honor, and though you probably don't remember any of it, you did give your consent."

"I'm sorry," I interrupted him, guessing this speech might go on for some time. Enma, judgment, shinigami . . . I must have laughed. "This is all a little too much. I heard the stories when I was a child, same as everyone else, but you honestly expect me to believe—"

"That they're all true? Yes. Well, more or less. You'll find some parts have been greatly exaggerated. Like the lakes of fire. Other parts, not enough, in my opinion."

As I went to rub my eyes, I realized my glasses were not there. Of course, my Virgil had seemed out-of-focus, but I had been too disoriented at first to wonder why. "My glasses—"

"Oh. Of course." He lifted them from the bedside table and placed them, folded, in my hand. "Unfortunately that isn't something death can cure. We shinigami might be able to regenerate ourselves from any injury we sustain from this point forward, but we are stuck with all the same imperfections we had when we died. I suppose some of us should just be thankful we still had our own teeth when we passed."

Now that I could bring him into focus, I blinked up at the man, half expecting the corpse-like visage of some vengeful kabuki ghost. I was pleasantly surprised to see his complexion was hale, completely lifelike, with the warm, wrinkled eyes of a man who was perhaps once a doting grandfather, or a well-respected shopkeep. Perhaps even a civil servant, aged prematurely by the stress of his office.

He raised his eyebrows at me. "Any questions so far?"

A million and one. But none of them were making it in any concrete form to my lips, so I could only shake my head at him dumbly.

Which for reasons unknown to me prompted another sigh. And, this time, a slight smile. "You will. Come on. Let's get you up and dressed and I'll give you a tour of operations. Your new boss wants to meet you."

I dismissed his offer of assistance, and he waited outside the door while I hoisted myself out of bed. Every muscle in my body pulled as though it hadn't been used in decades, as if it had been lying dormant much longer than a month. Of course, my real body, back in the world of the living, would have been cremated; this one was just a clever facsimile. But strangely enough, it still felt like my body. Fingers and toes ended in the right places. It was my body, only better, stronger. A suit of clothes had been left for me on a chair against the wall. The cut was somewhat outdated, but it fit fairly well, and it felt more like my old skin than the hospital yukata I'd woken in.

When I fixed my collar and tie in the infirmary mirror, it was _my_ face I saw staring back at me above _my own_ hands, and it was not changed or marred as I inexplicably feared it should be. Though dead I may have been, I looked and felt exactly like the twenty-nine-year-old self I had been when I went to bed the night of March the ninth.

Assured by my more human appearance, my guide—I would learn shortly that his name was Morita, and that he was the second-most senior shinigami in our department—led me down crisp marble hallways braced by dark wood wainscoting and the scent of old varnish, past the various departments that made up the Ministry of Death. This would be my home from now on, I thought as I took in my surroundings, this mirror image of the diet building in Tokyo. Nor did the idea strike me as unpleasant. It was the sort of building I felt a deep affinity for, one which promised the meticulous organization of information. I had never tired of university life, and at the first whiff of aging wood I longed to immerse myself in that atmosphere of academia again. The smell of India ink, the feel of old balance sheets under my fingers. Though dead, I could begin to see this place as home, and hoped that whatever shadowy board had chosen me for this afterlife had seen it fit to put me behind a ledger.

Presently we arrived at our destination: the offices of the Summons Division.

"It's kind of complicated," my guide groaned when I asked what was done there. "You see, very few people in the world really want to die, but most of them don't have a choice. However, a very small percentage of those people manage to find some loophole, some way of hanging on even after they should by all rights be dead, often by unnatural means."

"Unnatural means?"

"You'll see soon enough."

The office was bustling with activity, full of men and women of varying age and styles of dress typing on typewriters, rifling through files, chatting on telephones, making tea. It looked and sounded like a newspaper office—or at least how the motion pictures of the time portrayed it.

These were to be my coworkers, for all of eternity as far as I knew. At that time, I was still too overwhelmed by the news of my death and waking up here to attempt memorizing faces. That would all come in time.

But there was one among them who managed to capture my attention, if only for a brief moment. A man slightly younger than myself, in his mid-twenties I guessed, who had tried to adopt the fashions of the time but could not help betraying his Taisho origins. Maybe it was the rakish way his dark hair kept coming out of its slick, Valentino style, or how the trench coat he wore even indoors only made him look like a character out of a foreign hard-boiled film.

As Morita led me through the room to the office at the far end, its occupants glanced up at me one by one, some nodding their greetings to a fellow shinigami in place of a formal introduction. When _his_ eyes flickered toward me over his motionless typewriter, I thought for sure I was imagining their color. They were the queerest shade of purple, almost the color of Burgundy wine, like that which the ancients called Tyrian purple. Unusual—but then my own blue eyes had been known to raise a few eyebrows, on those occasions anyone looked too closely, and more than a few questions about my mother's fidelity.

When we stepped through the fogged-glass door of the department chief's office, I promptly forgot all about him.

—

The man behind the desk was already rising as we entered. He had a Clark Gable mustache and graying temples, and eyes of such a shape they seemed perpetually mournful, as though reflecting some inner well of deep sadness. He looked to have been in his late thirties or early forties when he died, though for all I knew, his true age could have been twice that.

"Your new recruit is here, Chief." Morita stood at attention beside his desk, fedora behind his back. "One Mr Tatsumi Seiichirou. Tatsumi, may I introduce Mr Saigen Issho, Chief of the Summons Division."

In place of a bow, Saigen extended his hand to me over the desk. It was telling of something, I was sure; probably just as telling that the Western gesture did not faze me in the least, and I was able to respond in kind.

His handshake was firm, but impersonal. Professional. I felt an immediate kinship with him. The kind of respect I heard in Morita's tone when he spoke of the man. "I trust Morita has filled you in on why you're here."

He indicated a chair across from his, and we both sat. Morita helped himself to a finger of whiskey from the chief's personal supply.

"I got the gist," I told him. That I had died. That I was now in the employ of this Ministry of the Dead. That my new career involved seeing to the living who refused to die.

"Did he tell you what you would be doing?"

My silence was answer enough.

Saigen fixed me a steady gaze. I knew he would be watching for my reaction, and was determined not to give him any reason to doubt my employment.

"We shinigami," he began, "have the singularly unpleasant task of reaping those aforementioned men and women's souls and bringing them to the Ministry to await their judgment. By force, if necessary. And it is often necessary. I won't lie to you, Tatsumi: this isn't an easy job. Spiritually, it can be quite difficult, and there will be times when you wish you weren't chosen to do this. But though it may sound harsh, what we do, it is a matter of preserving the very order of existence."

Over the next hour, the chief of the Summons Division outlined what was expected of me in my new position: operating procedure, official policy, living arrangements—as they were still rather ironically called—and funds. To his credit, he fielded my questions with great patience, as though he had not had to answer them hundreds of times before. He impressed upon me the importance and honor of our position, despite how harsh it seemed on the surface. Maintaining the proper and natural order of the universe was not a task that could be entrusted to just anyone. The fact that I was there, sitting across from him in that office, was evidence enough that Enma had judged me to have a singular type of soul, one whose capabilities and sense of duty were above reproach. I thanked him, as was only natural, though Saigen's frown made it quite clear he had not meant it to be a compliment.

"As I mentioned before," he said as our time drew to a close, "none of our shinigami work alone."

At this point Morita rose from his own seat and went to the door, gesturing to someone outside.

"You have already been assigned a partner to accompany you on your cases. He will get you settled in, and answer any further questions you might have about your duties in the field. And you're in luck." This was accompanied by a smile, the first I had seen on the chief. "You two will be overseeing summons in one of our quietest sectors, which is saying something in wartime. Hey, Tsuzuki."

I followed his gaze to the doorway, where the young man in the trench coat now stood. His purple eyes were wide and boyish, making him seem much younger than his twenty-six years, as they shifted from the chief to me.

"Meet Tatsumi Seiichirou, your new partner," Saigen said to him. "Tatsumi, this is Tsuzuki Asato from Sector Two, Kyushu."

We exchanged pleasantries, Tsuzuki greeting me with an exuberance that reminded me of a young puppy, wagging his tail. Eager to make a new friend. It seemed quite genuine at the time. I did not yet know how much of that exuberance was a mask, just as I could not know the reason for Saigen and Morita's clandestine glance.

"I had a feeling it would be you when you walked in," Tsuzuki said. "Hey, are you ready to learn the ropes? The Chief just gave us a new case this morning. Don't worry, it's an easy one. I can fill you in on the way."

"Trial by fire, huh?" The choice of words sounded ironic to my ears only after I had said them.

I looked to Saigen, about to ask if we were done. He dismissed us with a wave. "You're halfway there already. And, Tatsumi. If you want my advice, defer to Tsuzuki in all matters. He might seem like a royal screw-up, but he comes with high commendations from King Enma."

—

My first shock as an official shinigami was teleportation.

The second, discovering it was already June in the living world. I had been dead for three full months.

"But I thought . . . the cherry trees—"

"Oh, yeah." Tsuzuki chuckled, but it wasn't at my expense. "I guess we forgot to tell you. They're like that year-round in Meifu."

"Is it some sort of hex?" I was finding the existence of magic and the supernatural a hard pill to swallow, never mind the logical inconsistencies. But, when in Rome. . . .

"M-m, not that I know of. I always just assumed it was because they were dead, like us. Eternally unchanging. Same goes for the bugs. It's the same kind of logic behind why you can never cut your hair in Meifu."

"Let me guess. It never grows back?"

"Quite the opposite! No matter what you do to yourself, your shinigami body always wants to revert to the state it was in when you died. Which is a huge asset in the field, believe me. Especially when you encounter a demon—which doesn't happen that often!" he amended when he saw my disgust.

"So, if I follow, you're saying we can't be hurt."

"You can be physically injured," Tsuzuki explained, "and it _does_ hurt. The thing is, it's only temporary. So, after a while, you stop being afraid of getting wounded on the job, knowing your body is just going to heal itself. Even what would usually kill you is just a big inconvenience here."

I smiled to myself. "Death loses its sting."

He shared my smile, though it seemed even then as though we were reacting to different punchlines.

"Anyway," Tsuzuki said, "I apologize for kidnapping you from the office just after you arrived. I know you're still getting used to things. I just figured it would help you think if you could get out of there."

"Of course." I thought I could see where he was going. "Your case load must be unusually heavy, what with the war."

To my surprise, he blinked at me as though I had mistakenly spoken some other language.

Then: "I guess so. I only meant that you might like some place more familiar to help you get your bearings. But that's true too. Usually most of the guys would be out in their respective regions with only a skeleton crew left at the home office, but every sector has been so loaded down lately. . . . You just have to get used to stepping on each other's toes, is all. For a little while, at least."

"Does every unusual death come through here? What I mean is—" The question sounded awkward to me as soon as I said it, so I could sympathize with the puzzled look on Tsuzuki's face. "Clearly there is a high number of deaths coming in at a time like this. I'm sure a disproportionate number are unusual—"

"Oh. Yeah, you'd think so, but that isn't necessarily the case. Most of the deaths caused by enemy attacks get processed normally. Of course there's the issue of soldiers stationed overseas at their time of passing, but we have a separate extradition department set up for that. We've been working with the death ministries in other countries around the world to have our dead sent back here for judgment, and, likewise, we ship theirs back to them. And, of course, Enma is overseeing the Korean Peninsula and the coast of Asia until we get some conclusion to this war in the living world."

"As on Earth, so in Heaven."

"You could say that. In short, everyone gets to go home when they die. It's one human right that is literally undeniable by our respective governments. It's actually kind of reassuring to know that while everyone's fighting one another up here in Chijou, down there we have a good working relationship with our so-called enemies."

I would get used to thinking of the respective worlds of the living and dead in those terms: one above ground, the other below. Though Meifu and Chijou technically existed on separate yet overlapping planes, everyone here still spoke as they had when they were living, imagining the realm of the dead to be some kingdom buried deep in the fiery bowels of the Earth. All that was missing from the picture were the lakes of fire and acid, though I had it on good authority those had been paved over centuries ago. Even then Lord Enma outsourced karmic punishment.

"Many souls do get lost in wartime. You are right about that. But just as many get lost during times of peace, too. And out of thousands of deaths every day, only a small number of them actually require special attention. Our job is twofold: Find those who are hanging on long after their appointed time and send them on their way; and investigate those who have lost their lives way ahead of schedule through unnatural means, and find out the cause."

"I wasn't aware we would be investigating murder."

"M-m, not just any kind of murder. You see, Enma has this book, the kiseki, that alerts us when it finds a discrepancy between whose soul should be arriving for judgment and who actually shows up."

"Like an accounting error. Finally, something in this place I can understand."

"Actually, that's not far off. It might surprise you to know your typical, run-of-the-mill murder is actually one of the things that makes it into the kiseki just fine. It's the truly bizarre stuff the book can't figure out that we get sent to investigate: curses, ghost vendettas, unlawfully broken pacts with supernatural beings, that sort of thing. Anyway," he said, noting my skepticism, "once we're notified of the error, we track down the offending party and . . . help them on their way."

"So, we kill people."

"Ours is a mission of mercy," Tsuzuki said distantly, as though it were a line he had rehearsed many times. "I don't like to see it as killing, although I guess if you want to be technical about it, that is what we do. But these people are already dead by the time they're made known to us, for all intents and purposes. They no longer exist in a way that's natural, and even if they don't yet realize it, it would only be cruel to them to let them continue on in such a way."

At the time, with the memories of the life I was so recently split from still fresh in my mind—as if they had literally happened yesterday—I was not sure I could see his point. Nor that I wanted to. At the time, I was still thinking selfishly, nor could I have known that he was speaking from personal experience. He never actually let me see the scars that crossed his wrists, healed up and reopened again and again; but with time, I came to know about them.

With time I would understand his reasons for convincing himself that what he was doing filled some noble purpose, even while he secretly condemned himself for his part in it.

At the time, I could only take him at his word when he said, "You'll see what I mean."

—

The first soul we were sent to retrieve as partners belonged to a woman with a terminal illness who was waiting for her son to return from the war. As far as our cases went, it was not a complicated one—no ghosts or summoned demons, curses or mystical artifacts to deal with, no puzzles to figure out—but the sheer longing of this mother for her child affected me in a way I was not prepared for. She was not very old, but the wartime economic depression combined with her illness had left her malnourished, a pale skeleton of a woman.

It did not seem to matter. That she would hold on so far through all that pain, against the screaming of her cells for death, just to see him one more time—

She possessed a strength of will that my mother had never exhibited toward me or my sisters. Nor did I think I could ever find it in myself—neither as a brother or son, nor as a father, or someone's lover. She wanted so badly for us to wait, sure that her boy would be home any hour, any minute. She pleaded, bargained with us, cried with what little strength she had left. But she never rose to anger, though she would have been within her rights to hate us, we who were there to end her life.

In the end, she went quietly.

The entire time, Tsuzuki smiled like a Buddha. He sympathized with the woman—just as he sympathized with all our cases, even the ones that had only themselves to blame for their summons. Yet he performed his duties with the grace and integrity of a shinigami who had decades of experience. One might never have known how much each death troubled him, to look at him.

As we left the woman's house, he turned to me and said, "Can I buy you a drink?"

Surprised by his casual words, I turned to look at him. The question died on my lips, however, when I saw, for the first time, how fragile that perpetual smile of his truly was. A thin mask, that would take only a thin crack to shatter. I knew well enough to watch my step.

"I know, it sounds callous of me," he said when he saw my face, "but sometimes in this business you just need to feel normal afterwards. Alive—though that might not be the best word for it. . . . I'm just not really sure how else to explain it."

I lowered my eyes to show I understood. Perhaps our own deaths had lost their sting, but not necessarily so everyone else's. "We don't need to head back?"

"Her soul can make its way to Meifu just fine now, and our reports can wait a few hours."

Content that I had acquiesced—or, more accurately, that I had not refused—when he turned to me this time, the smile was genuine. Warm, and brilliant. After the darkness of our case, I felt more deserving of the shade.

"Have you ever been to Kyoto?"

"Kyoto?" It came out of me in a laugh. "Ah, no. Sad to say I never had the chance. Why?"

"Well then, there's a great little place I'd like to introduce you to. What?" he said to my shock when he grabbed my wrist. "You didn't think we were going to walk, did you?"

—

I was still getting used to the idea that I could teleport myself just about anywhere in Japan or its underworld equivalent just by thinking about it. Of course, in those days we didn't call it "teleportation." That came later, after the science fiction novels. Back then there was no official term. Our elders called it falling. As in, "I'm going to fall up to Chijou." And despite the moniker, it was a skill that actually took some effort to master. Hence Tsuzuki's all but dragging me through space by the wrist to get to our destination.

But was it worth the trouble! It was the middle of summer, and the old capital shimmered in the heat. Cicadas sang in the canopies of the manicured parks that surrounded the old temples and castles. Everything was just as I imagined it—which was the queer thing. Kyoto seemed hardly touched by the war, as if we had wandered into some memory of a richer time.

"It's one of the only places that hasn't been touched yet by the bombs," Tsuzuki told me. "Rumor has it the higher-ups in America have a soft spot for Kyoto."

"It would be tragic to lose this much history," I agreed.

Yet there was an arrogant logic to thinking one city should be spared while all the others suffered death and destruction on a biblical scale, for no other reason than that Kyoto's old temples and brothels were the most famous. There was something of an air of denial about a city that went about its daily business as if the world had not changed around it in centuries.

It was also an island of peace in the midst of the war, a respite from what unspeakable horrors the living committed on one another. Consequently, the very word "break" took on a deeper, much more powerful meaning for the two of us on that beautiful summer day, and all the others we would spend there. We were so blissfully ignorant of what was to come, now that I look back on those times with the clarity of hindsight.

It slipped out of me as we walked: "Do you ever wonder if maybe there was more that you could do?"

"What do you mean?" Tsuzuki asked in that manner that said he knew exactly what I meant.

"With the war going on. If what you say is correct, then we've been given a unique chance with these bodies. We can no longer die, and we'll only recover from physical injury."

He stretched himself taller beside me, made a sound that was not quite a clearing of his throat, and though I wondered if he was trying to tell me I needn't go on, I felt compelled to have it all out. Perhaps for myself more than for him.

"Couldn't we do something?" I lowered my voice, suddenly nervous we might be overheard in our scheming, we beings from the pages of old-wives' tales. "To end this war. Why should we be stuck here—why not assign us to Okinawa or the Philippines, or wherever the fighting is? Where we could possibly make a difference?"

"We _do_ have people stationed in those places," Tsuzuki said. "The War Division is down there right now, sorting out the losses on either side. Enma needs us here right now, holding down the fort, keeping everything running business-as-usual in the main islands."

Until the fighting finally reaches them too, I could almost hear him think.

"Besides, I like to think we _are_ making a difference."

"But couldn't the likes of us—"

"Influence the outcome of this war? Stop the fighting?" He shook his head, forced a laugh. "Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind once or twice. But that kind of thinking gets you nowhere. Except deeper into guilt, I guess. Even if it were allowed . . ."

Yes? I desperately wanted to know how he would have finished that sentence, but he merely shook his head.

"No. Trust me. It's easier to just carry on with this job without asking too many questions, and be thankful for what few victories you can get."

"Victories, hm. . . ." Was that how he saw them?

Was that what he considered the woman who was waiting for a son who would never return?

"I like to believe we do make a difference, even if it's only to one, maybe two lives at a time. Start thinking you can save everyone, and you'll only drive yourself mad. Now! if I could just remember what street this cafe was on again. You'll love it, Tatsumi. It may look like a hole-in-the-wall, but their Schillerlocken with summer berries is just to die for! If only it weren't so damned expensive because of the rationing. Now _there's_ a good reason to end this war."

I shook my head at him. "So you can afford to perpetuate your habit? Do you even need food to function?"

"No, but I still get hungry. All the time. And it's hard to think straight when you're in constant pain, you know!"

I wanted to remind him that we had bigger problems than our groaning stomachs; but something in the way he whined and the fight went out of me. All I could do was sigh.

"You go on with your hunger strike if you like," he went on. "Good luck with that. But I can only sacrifice so much of myself for this job, and my taste buds aren't going to be part of it. Ah! Speak of the devil, here we are."

—

That night, the events of the day played themselves out for me, over and over again, so I could get no sleep.

Only now the woman waiting for her son to return had my mother's face.

I had not mentioned her to Tsuzuki. I spoke of my past life no more than he had spoken of his—which was to say, not at all. I was not yet ready to speak of it—was not sure then if I ever would be—and he must have known this. At least enough not to pry.  
But I thought of what he had said about the war, our inability to help. It brought a memory to the forefront I had forgotten was there.

On my way to work the day my mother died, I had passed a group of boys destined for the front, saying their goodbyes to their families. They looked so young, hardly more than children. Certainly not old enough to carry a rifle, let alone know how to use it.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't affected. An amorphous anxiety burrowed its way into me, gnawing at my gut, scratching away at the inside of my skull. I was tempted to beg off early that day, claiming illness. It would have been the truth, but not as I wanted my coworkers to believe. If I had followed my instincts, I might have been home before Mother could harm herself. I might have taken away the need, prevented the whole sad affair.

Now I could not stop thinking about those boys.

The hymn they sang, which followed me on the air as I walked away, resurfaced that night to haunt me. How they smiled despite the fate they must have known awaited them. Despite the tears rolling down their own cheeks. It was all any of us could do. Just continue to believe we were on a true and righteous path—no matter the evidence to the contrary. No matter what happened, the sun still rose, the trees still blossomed in spring, and our glorious empire marched on.

We shinigami would keep marching on, impotent as the world went to hell around us. That was only the first night I wondered: what had I gotten myself into?

—

"I have a confession to make. I don't believe he's dead either."

Over the bustle of the cafeteria where they had agreed to meet on her lunch break—a far cry from the posh Kyoto cafes and bistros he usually frequented—Ukyo blinked up at him.

"You really do love him," she said. "Don't you?"

She had left her lab coat and all that went with it behind at the office, yet he could still feel the edge of her scalpel peeling the flaps of his veneer away, the keen scientist's eye behind the microscope trying to peer beneath his unreadable surface. That was the Ukyo he knew, never satisfied until she got her answer.

Whatever her meaning in asking him such a question, however, it was irrelevant when he really thought it over. There was no longer any reason not to tell the truth.

"I care about him very much," Oriya said with such honesty he actually felt refreshed by it. "Yes. I suppose I do love him."

"Even after everything he's done?"

He had not spared her many details after the university fire. He owed her that much then, and he stood by that decision now. They had long since left high school. Saki was long dead. Protecting her now meant telling the truth.

Even if it meant missing her smile a little more.

"Even after everything he's done."

She sighed, adjusting the napkin in her lap.

"Then you're a better friend than I am, because I'm not sure how I feel. How am I supposed to reconcile caring for a man who's done such terrible things? I could lie to myself, say he's really not the monster he seems to be, but what good would that do?"

"He would never hurt you, Ukyo. You must know that."

He only realized after the fact, at her sigh, that that wasn't what she had meant at all.

"I want to believe you're right," Ukyo said. "But that doesn't change things. He still frightens me."

"He frightens me, too."

"And yet, you continue to chase after him."

"Yes. Someone has to save him from himself."

A fierce snap as she broke her cheap, wooden chopsticks apart. He watched her head tilt at a slight angle, and knew she was resisting an urge to look at him. To glare at him for throwing that back in her face now, after everything had changed. Though that had not been his intention.

"Do you even think that's an attainable goal?" She couldn't quite erase all hope from her voice. "I mean, assuming he's still out there somewhere. Assuming there _is_ something to save."

And that was a big assumption. Absence of evidence, and whatnot.

"No," Oriya said. He was, after all, being honest. "But I shan't let that keep me from trying."

—

The first month and a half of our working together went smoothly enough. As smooth as matters concerning the living and the dead can be expected to go.

I got used to the feeling of being undead. Dare I say I even appreciated the new resilience it lent me. Somehow it helped to put being an agent of Enma in perspective, this sense that I was untouchable—helped me maintain my professional cool when it came time to reap the souls of our cases. Tsuzuki even lauded my heartlessness, to a certain degree, though not in such blunt words—said he envied the apparent ease with which I was able to carry out my duties.

I'm not sure whether it would be truer to say it was all a front, my cool calm, or that at those moments my behavior was indeed honest and genuine. It was simply that I moved from one task to the next so eagerly, I never allowed my deeper feelings to catch up. I had convinced myself they were unnecessary, a distraction to carrying out my task. My responsibilities depended on a clear head: souls to take, reports to file, fuda to learn and the occasional vengeful spirit or minor kami to quell. Even if I had wanted a moment for myself, there was no time for it. And when my fears looked to be within sight, running up behind me, Tsuzuki—as if knowing it—would whisk me away to Kyoto, to watch the living go blithely about their business as though they were not surrounded by death on all sides. And, naturally, for a cup of tea and pastry.

And then.

August.

—

"What is this all about, then?"

Tsuzuki stared wide-eyed at the bodies filing into the Summons office. Most of them I had never seen before. I would soon learn that personnel had been called in from the other divisions—some of whom had worked briefly for Summons in the past, before being reassigned to departments more befitting their skills, or constitutions. But different divisions did not usually talk; it took an issue that absolutely could not be resolved except by coordination to make them play nice with one another. Even rarer that they should cooperate in person. "Not sure," Tsuzuki answered me, but it was plain from his face he had some indication, some guess that was better than mine. "Looks like something's about to happen."

That sounded ominous. "Any idea what?"

"I don't know, but this is what it looked like around here right before the first big round of carpet bombing."

Superstitious fear took whatever else Tsuzuki might have been about to say, and shut it tight behind his lips lest it come true. Nor could I exactly blame him. In just the past few months, the bombings had become simply the order of the day. No sector had been spared. Once the Ministry knew how to deal with the deaths resulting from them, they became an occurrence we in Summons heard about but never saw, and only rarely had to deal with in our capacity as shinigami.

Even I, though I had only been with them a short time, already felt distanced from my mortal life, as if a thick wall of time had been erected between it and myself. I remembered the panic when the air raid sirens whined. I remembered the terror of not knowing when or whence the bombs would come, or whether it was you or your next-door neighbor who would survive the night.

But now it felt as though it had all happened to someone else. I knew how I had died, but the exact memory of it was still locked away from my conscious self, trapped inside a box in my mind I could not open. Leaving me with only . . . impressions, and vague, disembodied feelings.

So I could not blame Tsuzuki for leaving his partner's side and pushing through the gathered crowd to hear better.

When the chief emerged from his office, hollow-eyed and followed by the equally grim-faced secretary of the War Division, we all fell silent, hanging on the edge of our nameless anxiety.

Nor did the chief bother with pleasantries.

"We just received word from our counterparts in America. The government there plans to end this war quickly, and they're planning something big, something that is projected to cause unprecedented destruction. We are told to expect unusually high numbers of fatalities. Therefore, until further notice, all shinigami are hereby ordered to remain on stand-by so we can respond to this event as soon as it happens."

"What kind of event are we talking?" said one of the Kansai agents.

"We do not know for sure." It looked as though it particularly pained the chief to admit he did not have so critical an answer. "We were not given specific details. Either the American ministry's spies were not able to find out, or they are refusing to share that information with us."

"Goddamned politics," Morita growled from the back, voicing what the rest of us only thought.

The War Division secretary shifted in his solid pose, and we were all slightly more grateful for his aura of confidence when he took control of the briefing. "What we do know is that this attack will be like nothing we've seen before. You all remember when the fire bombings started? How it completely upset our system? Well, it seems the Allies just keep coming up with more and more inventive ways of killing people. We have been warned these deaths won't be like any we're used to prosecuting. We need all the bodies we can get in the field on this one, which means putting aside our interdepartmental differences. And it means we need _everyone_ in tip-top shape, focused, and ready to go when the call comes in."

I couldn't help noticing he glanced at Tsuzuki when he said "everyone," though it was so brief it would have been easy to miss if I hadn't been watching him. It seemed even outside our division he had developed some sort of reputation.

The War Division, it quickly became apparent, had a plan in place for just about every military action the living world could think of, even one as uncertain as that which we now faced. The department's secretary laid out a list of protocols that each of us was supposed to follow when the event occurred, from triage of the soon-to-be dead to the chain of command should we encounter any problems for which we had no answers. It was, after all, to be an unprecedented type of disaster.

I admired the secretary his preparedness, and found my anxiety at least momentarily assuaged by his talk of tactics and procedures. Whatever followed, I assured myself, I would have his plan to keep me from veering from my mission.

Tsuzuki's own train of thought could not have been further from mine. Immediately after the briefing, he chased down our chief and asked, "What about our case?"

"It's been suspended," Saigen said. "Until this crisis is dealt with."

"But we're _so close_ to ending this thing." We were currently looking into the case of a munitions factory that had already caused the untimely deaths of half a dozen adolescent girls by way of freak workplace accident. Based on the testimony of some of the survivors, we suspected a cursed object was to blame; and after a week of searching, we were finally homing in on the culprit.

"If you pull us out now," Tsuzuki said, "more girls could die. We have to get back out there, Chief!"

Saigen turned to me. "Tatsumi, would you tell your partner why this is so important?"

The fact that he wanted me, a relatively new recruit, to tell off a senior agent with eighteen years of experience over me should have been telling, if I weren't busy at the time being taken aback by his response. "Actually, Chief, I must agree with Tsuzuki on this one. Though I understand the urgency of this matter, I think the young women involved in our case would argue saving their lives from what is, in fact, a clear and present danger is a much more acute concern at the moment than these . . . nebulous threats. Allow us to continue our investigation, and when the attack does come, send a message our way and we will come immediately to your aid."

I thought I had argued my case well. I even allowed myself a small, smug smile in my confidence. I was not prepared to see such disappointment settle in over Saigen's already somber features.

"These orders come from higher up. But even if I did have the authority to overrule them, I wouldn't. I'm sorry, gentlemen, but your request is denied," he told us, though it seemed he was speaking directly to me when he added: "I thought you of all people would show a little more sympathy in this situation."

—

The waiting was difficult. Who knows how many souls went unclaimed or escaped their fate in the couple of days that the Summons Division sat dormant. Cases like mine and Tsuzuki's were lost in the mountains of paperwork that followed, nor did we have a moment to follow up on them for some time. By then, the world had already been irrevocably changed.

But nothing could be as difficult as what was to come.

I will spare you as much detail as I can, out of respect for the dead. Being of that same generation that came of age during wartime, I can understand why so many were reluctant to write about the events of those particularly dark days, even if only to preserve the memory for posterity. I understand the feeling that no words can touch the horror of reality. I can understand the shame beneath the horror, even though I was already dead: the inhuman indignities heaped upon us, and all the while a niggling sense of our failure, our humiliation, our loss. Our collective blame, for both ourselves and for our enemies who thought such action could ever be justified. Anger at our sacred leaders who could not protect us from this new threat from the skies, who debated how to keep the war machine going while untold numbers of their subjects lay dying. I like to think they were just as stunned as we were, but my sympathies don't seem to stretch far enough to encompass them.

We got our orders on what had promised to be a sunny August morning. In Hiroshima, the bomb had already fallen. The first casualties were starting to trickle in to Judgment, but rumor reached us that fatalities numbered in the tens of thousands.

It was only the start. The final numbers would be staggering, spanning decades, but long-term ramifications were not our immediate concern. We shinigami were needed in Chijou to help with the retrieval effort. No soul had ever died in a nuclear explosion before. No shinigami had ever investigated such a death. We had to think on our feet. Each pair was assigned a section of the city. We were released on the ruined metropolis to do what we did best: find the doomed, and ease them on their way.

But when we arrived, it was a scene out of Hell. The city was on fire, what was left of it: buildings flattened or crumbling wherever you looked, trees stripped and uprooted and lamp posts bent to the ground. Rubble, everywhere. By then, a few hours had passed since the blast, and the once clear sky was now black with ash and . . . something else, something that tingled on the skin and at the back of one's throat. Made you feel as though no amount of water would ever alleviate your thirst again.

Though I was already dead, no sooner had I set foot in that damned city than a powerful terror seized me full in its grip and would not let me go. I froze to the spot as it all washed over me: images I could not control, a cacophony I could not banish. The lion's-roar of flames. A towering, raging inferno. The roofs of my neighborhood a living, breathing red monster, licking at a black sky as it slithered from one house to the next. The air so thick with smoke and ash each breath was a death sentence. I saw the kind old widow who lived in the house next to mine come stumbling out, her hair and arms on fire. I only recognized her by the pattern on her monpe trousers. We had all come out onto the street to assess the damage, put out the fires, but there was no stopping them. There were too many bombs, too much of a breeze that night, too much kindling for their fire. So we tried to flee, but there was no escape once we started to run. The heat bore down like an iron, pressing us down—pressing on our lungs, on the backs of our eyes, until all we could see was the red of our own blood. Choking, fighting for even the smallest of breaths so we hardly even noticed when clothes went up in flames, then flesh—

Tsuzuki shook me back to myself. And I was surprised to find I had no burns to be sore to his touch. I was still standing, whole, unburnt—an offering to the war that had long since already been made. My death was in the past and hundreds of miles away; my shinigami body, immaculate, even as the radioactive ash drifted down on to us. At that time, we had no idea what it was.

"Come on, Tatsumi," Tsuzuki said. "We have to find survivors."

He was right, of course. There were people out there depending on us. But "survivor" was, in our case, only a temporary designation.

—

We found them soon enough, tattered and singed, wandering about lost and bewildered. Their world had literally been shattered; they knew not where to go, what to do with themselves. Their purpose was gone; whereas we, we angels of death, had arrived only to fulfill ours.

Those were the more fortunate ones. There were others whose own skin hung off them like rags, or who had given in to their thirsts and drunk from the contaminated river, thereby sealing their fate. Theirs were the cases we would find ourselves drawn to in the makeshift camps that gathered, made makeshift morgues by the radioactivity. And, to a lesser degree, by us.

The kiseki was apparently unfamiliar with deaths like these. Radioactivity poisoning was a slow, agonizing, and uncertain way to die. It destroyed its victim from the inside out, a fast-moving cancer. We had no shortage of souls who were doomed by this sickness. We quickly learned to spot the ones who would not recover as we moved among them, as though we could _hear_ the degeneration of their cells, those who required our touch to spare them from further torment and send them on their way.

Tsuzuki was in his element there. One after another, he knelt at their sides, took their hands or touched cool fingers to their foreheads. He sat with them as they begged for water, family, relief—liberally giving false assurances that everything would be all right. Right before he took them.

I would not exactly call them lies, the words of comfort he gave the dying. The judgment they were going to—and whatever awaited them beyond—was surely better than this living tableau of hell on earth. They would be safe there, free of pain forever more. That was what his crimson eyes promised as they held each victim's so steadily, unabashedly: sanctuary, peace, away from this.

He never seemed more beautiful to me than he did then. Even marred by the blood of the dying where they had grabbed him in their desperation. It only enhanced the illusion. He was a bodhisattva, an angel, a Christ—perfect in his grace and compassion. How their pain must have weighed on his soul, yet he let not a bit of it slip past his patient smile, knowing they needed his strength, his resolve, more than anything in their final moments.

And there was I, unable to fulfill my obligations with my heart in my throat and ripples of my own death overlapping every sound that reached my ears, every biting scent, every vista set before me. While Tsuzuki took them all without hesitation into his arms—the women and children and old men, the immolated and maimed and the whole of body alike—I stood back, afraid to touch them. Afraid their sickness would rub off on me and I would join them, burning all over again. Afraid that this time the pain of death would not be a temporary one, but something more like what I deserved.

We moved through the camp like cranes combing a pond for frogs—stepping slowly, carefully, among the myriads, studying each terrified, blackened face for signs of the end. At one point, a low droning sound caught our ears. It took a moment to recognize it as words. Tsuzuki nodded toward the source. Your turn, his gesture seemed to say.

His slight, sad smile did not feel judgmental, but it spurred me into action nonetheless. I had a responsibility here, it reminded me, and it was others beside myself who would suffer if I failed to fulfill it. I could not shirk my duties, or pass them off to Tsuzuki and the others forever. I had asked him once for a way to make a difference. Who was I to pick and choose now how that difference was made, when the governments at war never asked nor cared about the opinions of the dead?

I followed the voice to a pallet where a woman lay, her age impossible to tell: She sounded ancient, though it was no doubt the smoke that had burned her vocal chords raw. I could not see how she was still alive. Below the neck she was merely slick, blackened rags. At first I thought they were the remains of her clothes, before realizing with horror they might just as well have been her flesh. It was only the recognition of our shared humanity that overcame my aversion to the sight of her and the foul stench rising from her cot. Though even attempting to speak must have brought her pain the likes of which I could only imagine, she continued to chant the nembutsu.

Moved by something beyond my control—pity or the empathy of a fellow burned sacrifice, I know not which—I fell to my knees beside her. Still I dared not touch her. Doing so would surely have put her in agony, I reasoned. But did my fear of her and the other victims really need a reason?

"I'll pray with you," I offered instead.

And she broke her stream of prayers long enough to attempt a smile for me. When she began again, I murmured the words along with her. I had never considered myself a Buddhist—or much of anything, for that matter—but I knew the words, and it was the very least I could offer a woman who would not make it through the night, let alone the hour.

After some time—it could not have been very long—she trailed off into a whisper, and at last altogether into silence, and was still. Against my fears, I reached out then and touched her forehead. "May you wake in the Pure Land," I found myself saying over her, though the words rang hollow and stale to my ears. Too little, too late. I do not know what possessed me, other than a desire to bring some sense to what was at its core a senseless death. It certainly wasn't belief. I knew better now than I ever did in life: Death, and what comes after, is never as simple as the various religions would have it.

"You could have taken her earlier."

I was not aware of how long Tsuzuki had been standing over me, watching me. I did know not to take offense at his words. They were not meant to reproach; merely to guide. Yet their timing made them sting, even if he had not intended it as such: "It's okay, you know. No one will reprimand you for it in a situation like this. This is . . . it's unprecedented, to say the least. It's not really killing. If you take them early, I mean. Just to stop the pain."

"I'll keep that in mind," I assured him with a hardened nod. It was better than admitting the truth: that I had the power in my hand to end that woman's suffering, and I had been too afraid to make the decision to use it.

—

"My apologies, Tsuzuki, for my behavior today. I suppose I should have warned you I was a coward."

It felt freeing to admit it by the light of the distant burning buildings, as if it were some insignificant thing told by a childhood campfire, to be sucked upward by the flames into that black, toxic sky and never heard again. Now that I was dead, I suppose it was rather insignificant. And I had always felt most at ease with my true self in the dark—in the dim corner of a bar, the office after hours, or in the quiet stillness of my room, the flicker of a kerosene lamp flame over a page my only source of light.

"You're not a coward, Tatsumi," Tsuzuki insisted, ever the worst offender in any pissing match of self-pity. "You're handling this better than some of us, and we've been doing this a lot longer than you have."

"It's not just this. I always shied away from conflict. I never fought in the war, never enlisted—"

"Neither did I," Tsuzuki said. "Or the chief, or Morita or Takayanagi. Does that make us cowards?" He thought for a moment. "Although, to be fair, there weren't any wars going on when we were at the age to enlist."

He was trying to make me feel better, though, and at the very least I appreciated the effort.

"I'm curious, Tatsumi. How did you avoid the draft? Er, if you don't mind my asking."

"It's all right." I found Tsuzuki's patient smile encouraging. As well as the suggestion of a different topic. A momentary respite from the death around us. "My little sister came up with the idea, actually. A classmate of hers had told her about a brother who received a deferment for his tuberculosis. She got this notion in her head that if she could get me to catch a chest cold, I could fool the doctors at the recruiting office into thinking _I_ had T.B.

"Well, it worked." I couldn't help the slight tug of a smile at the memory. My sisters worrying over me, their confidence in their own genius. Their mortification when their efforts turned out better than they had expected. "I contracted a cold, and I had a nice, deep rattling cough just in time for my exam. The doctor took one listen to my lungs and told me I would never join the army. We were relieved—until my little cold developed into pneumonia. I was out of university for a month, nearly failed my classes."

Tsuzuki laughed, taking a swig of whiskey from the flask he had been nursing for the past hour. I had a hunch Morita had passed him more than updates when our department met to compare notes that afternoon. Another of Tsuzuki's weaknesses about which I was then only beginning to learn.

Plunking the flask down on the pavement by his feet—I had already declined his offer to share—he folded his arms on his knees and leaned over them. "Hard to imagine you lying like that, Tatsumi. You just don't seem like the type. To be any good at it, anyway."

"Better than you think. But it wasn't hard to fake being sick when I was all but coughing up my lungs."

I had hardly spared a thought for my sisters since waking in Meifu. Now those warm memories melted into concern. "I don't even know if they're still alive, my sisters." Or if they even knew I was dead.

"Maybe when this is all over, you'll have to look them up," Tsuzuki slurred. He seemed to have reached a more peaceful place in his drunkenness. I envied him that, after the day we had, though I had no desire to join him in it.

"You'd have to be careful, though. They shouldn't know about you. Have to maintain order in the universe, and all that."

"Let them keep believing I'm dead?"

"You _are_ dead."

"You know what I mean." He sounded as though he were speaking from personal experience. "What did you do? It must have been, what, fifteen years ago that you passed? Twenty? You still have living relatives, Tsuzuki? Siblings?"

He groaned a negative. "All dead. Every last one."

I figured by the tone of his answer we were done with that line of talk, so I said nothing.

After a while, a new thought struck Tsuzuki. Or perhaps simply a conciliatory mood.

"I had a sister, too," he said, so quiet at first I thought I had imagined it. "Once upon a time. We have that in common at least. Right, Tatsumi?"

—

We never believed the Allies would drop a second bomb. Though the American reapers warned us it was coming, we doubted any civilized power could be that cruel, twice.

We certainly never expected it to fall on Nagasaki.

_Our_ sector.

Considering the magnitude of the destruction, Tsuzuki kept it together rather well in Hiroshima. But there was something about seeing the city he visited day after day—that he had watched grow for eighteen years, come to embrace as a second hometown—reduced to rubble and fire and ash.

I had only begun to appreciate the beauty that old trading city had to offer, yet I could hardly trust my eyes to believe the devastation. It was as though some new piece of me that had finally begun to thrive in its surroundings had been ripped out brutally by its roots. The factory where we had been working our last case was gone—entirely wiped from the earth, having been so close to the site of the blast. The girls working in it whom we might still have been able to help just days ago, all presumed dead. I could only imagine how Tsuzuki felt, knowing his guilt must have been at least as deep as mine. Knowing it was tearing him apart inside, the niggling thought that—somehow—if he'd defied our chief after all, or returned to the city a day earlier—if he had done any number of things he did not do—he could have saved them. He might have saved them all.

Somehow we found the strength to carry out our responsibilities. There were so many souls who needed our help, we lost track of each other. But when I saw him later, covered for the second time in only days in radioactive soot and blood, I knew—somehow I knew—that something inside him had broken. Somehow I knew I had lost him.

That was the beginning of the end. Of the war—thank god—but also of our partnership.

—

"How many more god-damned bombs is it gonna take before the emperor fucking surrenders, already?"

"Show some respect," Shiromaru hissed at Takayanagi through her teeth. As a former girls' school teacher and socialist newspaper man respectively, it was no secret the two loathed each other. Tensions were high in our department regardless, as they were throughout Meifu and the living world, but for some of us that still did not warrant using blasphemous language.

"Why?" Takayanagi spat back, shaking his morning paper. "Because he's Heaven's representative on earth, or some such bullshit?" We cringed, even if some of us felt, deep down in a place we would never admit the existence of, that the criticism was well placed. "What's going to happen to me if I don't? I'm already dead! And there'll be a lot more to join our ranks if _his holy highness_ doesn't show this country some goddamn respect and do the right thing. You know these bombs aren't the end game, right? It's only a matter of time before the Allies invade the main islands. They'll hit Kyushu first, if they don't bomb us all to hell—"

"Takayanagi," Morita warned, "_shut up._"

"And of course we won't have enough troops to stop them when they come ashore, 'cause we already scattered them all over a dozen different islands in the Pacific. It'll be like fish in a barrel. But unlike Normandy, _we'll_ be the fish."

Tsuzuki very quickly, very quietly stood up. There was little drama to his exit, though it still managed to turn most heads in the office. Everyone, it seemed, had been waiting for it. Everyone except myself.

"Nice. Real well done, Takayanagi," Morita growled across the room, "you _ass!_"

"What? Am I not entitled to my opinion now?"

"Right. That's _all_ you were doing, voicing your opinion."

"You might want to go after him," Shiromaru murmured to me while the other two castigated one another across the room. Nodding my thanks, I piled my paperwork neatly at my desk. "Try the cherry trees," she suggested.

She was not wrong.

I found him by the little stream that trickled through the grove. The tension was evident in his frame: pensive, irritated, restless. When he turned at my approach, it was anger I saw in those crimson eyes. They flashed at me as accusingly as two stigmata. As though I were somehow to blame for his mood. And, who knows, perhaps in my inability to prevent it, I was.

Eager in my pitiful way to difuse the situation and regain my good-natured partner, I told him, "Forget what Takayanagi said. He was just baiting you to get a reaction. Or else he's an idiot, and not worth upsetting yourself over."

"But he was right. Wasn't he? About the invasion? It makes sense. If this war doesn't end soon—"

The implosion came so suddenly, I was not prepared, nor did I know what to do. As if he were one of our bomb victims, I could not bring myself to reach out for him, only watch as he turned away from me to hide a sudden rush of emotion. It did not seem my place to do more.

"I can't keep doing this, Tatsumi." He would not let me see his tears, but I could hear them, unshed, in the waver in his voice. "Is this what the world is coming to? Governments can just press a button and wipe out ten thousand people, just like that, and there's nothing you or I or any of us can do about it but clean up the mess they leave behind every goddamn time . . . ?"

I didn't know what I should say. That I felt the same way? Suddenly anything seemed trite.

"I can't keep doing this job if this is going to be the new business-as-usual. I just can't. If they drop one more of those things, Tatsumi, I—"

There it was. The break. The spasm of the shoulders. The hitch of breath that escaped his control.

"I'm not sure it's still worth it."

"Doing this job?"

He rounded on me again. He did not bother to wipe his tears. "_Any of it!_ If this is what the world is coming to, maybe they don't deserve our help after all. Maybe none of them deserve to live."

I was stunned. Not so much by his words, which were only an echo of my own doubts, but that the carefree Tsuzuki Asato, well of infinite patience, had spoken them. And with such determination. "You can't mean that."

"Can't I?"

"You're frustrated. I understand that. We all are. That's the only reason Takayanagi said what he did," I tried. "You can't let what he said destroy your resolve."

"But isn't he right? Is the 'order of the universe' even worth preserving if humanity chooses to blast itself into oblivion? And who are we to stop them, really, Tatsumi? What are we even doing here, if not fighting a losing battle! If life is worth so little to the living, I don't see how anything we do makes one damn little bit of difference. If that's the way we're all headed—"

He had been worrying his right wrist with the fingers of his left hand, and with those words—perhaps conscious he was doing it for the first time—he dropped them, tucking his right behind himself. Hoping I had not noticed the seemingly throw-away gesture. As I said, I had no reason to wonder about his past at that time, either alive or dead. But I did begin to wonder then—wonder what secrets were buried in his soul, what could possibly be so shameful that he would guard them even to the point of overcompensation.

Guilt? That must have been one reason. And it was one I could readily understand. I may have dreamed of the cold salvation of a razor blade once or twice, those seemingly endless nights the ghosts in my own life returned to haunt my restless mind. I may never have acted on those fantasies, my cowardice or sense of self-preservation being the stronger force, but it was still one thing we had in common: a romanticized opinion of self-destruction.

But when he muttered, perhaps more to himself than to me: "I'm not sure that's a world I want to live in," I could only think of my mother.

And I wished Enma had never chosen me to be his partner.

—

Two days later, the emperor surrendered. Cases were momentarily forgotten as the entire office gathered around the radio to listen to the address. I tried to drown it out in work, but my fingers could only sit silently on the keys of my typewriter as if of their own respectful volition. Takayanagi and Shiromaru both cried silently at their desks at the sound of emperor's weak voice, his careful, high-toned diction. Theirs were not the only wet eyes in the office.

Tsuzuki's were among the few that stayed dry. The shame of defeat did not touch him as it did many of the others. He had already separated himself from that world, declared himself an alien to it, an antithesis. If his words before could be taken seriously, and not just as frustrated rantings, this could only mean that the world was not yet entirely irredeemable in his eyes.

I was relieved as well, if for a different reason. I had just learned that my sisters and their families had made it through the past two weeks alive and well. Now, I believed in my naivete, everything could return to normal.

I was mistaken.

We fought, Tsuzuki and I. Little disagreements at first, over petty things. But they wedged the gap the bombs had first cracked open between us ever wider, clearing the way for doubt, for resentment, for loathing. His more frequent fits of depression only further reminded me of my mother's selfish acts of destruction—and subsequently my own failures—and I held that against him. When I lost my patience, I made sure he knew it. Which was not to say he spared me my faults, either.

For one, I insisted on performing our summoning duties by the book.

I had thrown myself in my free time—of which I had much too much working the Kyushu sector—into the study of Meifu law and policy. Initially, when I had been thrown out into the field as Tsuzuki's partner, my ignorance of such matters and the chief's insistence on my deferral to Tsuzuki led me to believe that his way of conducting business was not only what was expected of me, it was correct.

I came to discover that not only had Tsuzuki been cutting corners for almost two decades while Saigen and the higher-ups turned a blind eye, his bad habits were getting worse. Granting last wishes; extending lives already pushed past their natural limits long enough for finishing unfinished business; pursuing criminals of whom there was no mention in the kiseki; taking justice in the living world into his own hands. In some cases even, becoming far more intimate with his cases than any responsible shinigami should ever have allowed himself to become. This was not mere sloppiness. It was a willful disregard for the rules—rules which had been written for the express purpose of maintaining order among the separate realms.

A part of me now suspects Tsuzuki may have been challenging Enma, if only on a subconscious level, to terminate whatever agreement had been arranged for him, and grant him a more permanent death. Then again, I may be giving him too much credit: His actions were not always driven by higher mental processes; he was prone even then to knee-jerk decision making, especially those dictated by his gut, and used to getting his way through manipulation, subtle or otherwise, with promises he never intended to keep.

But to Tsuzuki, my insistence on following the rules was received as an injustice toward the damned. A sign I had no human feelings, no concern or empathy for their fate. To be fair, I overreacted to his laxity with a zealousness that was not exactly sensitive to our cases' delicate situations. As Morita might have put it, I was a horse's ass. In this aspect, Tsuzuki was right to admonish me.

However, I was right to admonish his behavior as well. I may have been insensitive, but I got the job done; whereas he _played_ with life and death.

He reversed a young woman's fate.

It must have been early September. The days were still warm and long, but the light was changing, the first hints of autumn in the air. And the first hints of change in the country. A funereal resignation sat over everything. Japan was occupied, young men returned from afield damaged, beaten, and the lack of proper rations brought the Judgment Bureau steady business.

She belonged to the latter category: a girl who had spent most of the last decade under house arrest for no other reason than the misfortune of being born to French immigrants. She had watched her parents wither and die of malnutrition and despair, suffered neglect and humiliation at the hands of her fellow countrymen, entrusted with her care; and now that Death had finally arrived to end her suffering and unite her with her family, Tsuzuki whisked her out from under its grasp, and resurrected her to a sort of half-life of loneliness and grief, in a native country that no longer wanted and could not support her.

He did it because he pitied her, I know. That much was plain. She must have reminded him of someone, someone he would have traded his own life to save. Or perhaps had, and would all over again. Maybe in his mind he had even fallen for her, as he managed to convince himself he had fallen for so many of our cases before.

Whatever his reasons, what he did was so grossly, so obscenely against the rules I could not turn a blind eye to it, no matter how I may have sympathized with the girl. It was wrong to bring her back from a natural and appointed death. And I said as much when I reported him to Saigen, even going so far as to submit an official complaint to the Castle of Candles.

But their hands were tied. There was nothing they would do, short of giving Tsuzuki a slap on the wrist.

I was not as lenient. My sense of justice forced me to confront him. My mental list of his abuses had grown considerably in the weeks following Nagasaki, and I recalled them for him with brutal detail, heaping one atop another without rest. It felt as though a shadow had passed over me, darkening my mind, and I could no longer keep my feelings locked up behind a wall of tactful professionalism.

I was cruel. I did not hold back. He had pushed me to the point my aversion to conflict was overruled by the emotions roiling within me. Once the torrent of accusations came spilling out, I could not stop them, nor separate the true from the exaggerated; all felt equally valid in my indignation. They shattered around him like the broken glass of so many of my parents' quarrels.

He did manage to land a few blows of his own. Reminding me that he had been a shinigami almost two decades longer than myself—that he was one of the senior-ranked agents in our department, and I had no right to go behind his back, let alone presume to know better than he what was best for our cases. That I was a coward for not standing up to him myself. That he not only had more experience, he was more powerful than myself. He had ten loyal shikigami at his beck and call then, whereas I could barely manage to use more than a few weak fuda. I hid behind my words, he said, because I knew I had nothing else—no real weapons to fight him with, no defense.

My defense, I said, was his victims' pain. He believed he was saving them, when in fact he was only delivering them toward further suffering. The girl he brought back from death—he might have thought he was giving her a priceless gift, but _she_ would live long enough to regret it. To resent it. He had made of her an abomination. An error that upset the very fabric of existence.

Apparently I chose the wrong word. He changed before my eyes from that eager, tail-wagging pup I had blindly followed to a growling, rabid cur. He said I had no idea what truly constituted an abomination. He said he could destroy me if he wished. He had done as much to stronger shinigami in the past, and it would be easy for him. I had no idea what he was truly capable of—how much damage he had done when I was just a naïve child trying to raise crickets. I should be _afraid_ of him.

And for a moment, I was.

Then fear turned to indifference, and a cool, calm darkness engulfed me where the roaring inferno of his anger could not reach. In its shade, I was numb to both the resentment and the admiration, the pity and worship and embarrassment, that until then I had harbored toward him. What could he do, I asked myself, that could possibly be worse than continuing our toxic partnership? I let cold, calculating reason take over, and it could find only one solution.

I had to get away from him.

—

The door slid back on its runners with a whispering _hush_, and Oriya looked back, afraid she might wake at the sound of his escape.

But there was no change in Ukyo's sleeping form—no wrinkle of the brow or hitch of breath to indicate the noise had penetrated her deep sleep. The peaceful expression remained on her youthful face. And in the curve of her naked body beneath the quilt. Even now there was something pure about her person, something that seemed to defy the depth of her experience and the sharpness of her mind, as well as the darkness _he_ had planted there. Something in the ability of her smile to erase the shadows in Oriya's own heart like the sun emerging from behind a cloud.

Yet those qualities—innocence and experience, purity and intelligence—seemingly exclusive, managed to coexist just fine in her petite frame, her wide and honest eyes.

As his gaze lingered, Oriya supposed he should feel guilty.

And not entirely for catching her so unguarded.

—

After all, he supposed, he had broken an unspoken pact between them, coming here. Rather than allowing her to come to him at his residence in Kyoto at her own leisure, and of her own initiative. He had invaded her space without leaving her much choice in the matter but to tolerate his company, and on top of it all under the guise of pursuing _him_. Once again, he had laid that burden from the past on her doorstep. Like some ignorant dog, bringing her some bone he found in the garden, wagging his tail proudly and unaware of how it had come to be there to begin with.

Which, of course, brought to mind that other unspoken pact—

But that they had broken long ago, even before Muraki's disappearance. Fully aware of what they were doing, and coming to a mutual realization that it really did not matter to either one of them what came of it. Making excuses for themselves, perhaps, that there was nothing else they could do in their situation, both suffering in their longing for a love that could never be consummated, even if the nature of that love was slightly different for each of them.

The object of it was the same, and that seemed to be enough.

Oriya tread silently with clothes in hand to the living room, and dressed there. It took only moments to pack his bag. He had never really unpacked it, not knowing how long he intended to stay. Or how long it would take her to kick him out.

In the end, it was the feeling that he was welcome that made him leave. It seemed to spur in him a guilt that if he chose to stay, he would pollute this little green sanctuary that Ukyo had managed to carve out for herself in suburban Tokyo. If not through any fault in his own character, then merely by darkening her doorstep with that specter of their past once again.

As though there were no traces of Muraki here. They were everywhere: in the garden; in a picture in the family shrine; in the arrangement of roses in the center of the dining room table. But none of these were leaping-off points. They were not clues to the next way station. They were cul-de-sacs. Dead ends. If he wanted pointers, markers that told him he was on the right path, he would have to look elsewhere.

Or risk losing himself in the past.

Not that he wasn't tempted.

—

He slipped on his shoes and quietly opened and closed the front door. It made a small creak on its hinges that could not be helped. Ukyo was usually a light sleeper. But he doubted she would try to intercept him, make him stay. One look at him and she would understand his urgency. She would have to. They were too much alike in that respect—too understanding of their mutual affliction to impede one another in their search for a cure.

_Let me know_ is all she would say to him if she were standing there on the doorstep, shivering in the January air and watching him go. Or something to that effect: _I want to know. One way or another._

_If you find him._

He started to reach for his pipe. An automatic, defensive response. He had to remind himself it was not here. And even though the cigarettes were, they were a poor substitution for what he really craved.


End file.
